

''/''-^^'^ :^M£\'"''-^<'^ ^M^ 



c?' oi^ll", -% 





< \^^ V * « *%* ' , V " \ V 






.^^^ "^. 






■ ''..s^ jp) ^ "77. .^'^^ ^ "TyT^-- ^ 








Mrs. Stowe's Writings. 



LITTLE FOXES. 

One "Volurae. 



HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS, 

One "Volnme. 



THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND 

One T^oliain.e. 



AGNES OF SORRENTO. 

One "Volnrae. 



UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 

One AT'olnme. 



THE MINISTER'S WOOING. 

One ^olnme. 



OLD TOWN FOLKS. 
One ~\^olmxLe. 



FIELDS OSGOOD, & CO, PubUshers. 



LITTLE FOXES. 



BY 



CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD, 

AUTHOR OF "house AND HOME PAPERS." 




BOSTON: 
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.; 

SUCCESSORS TO TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 
1870. 



U 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, Dy 
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 
the Clerk's Office of tne District Court of the District of Massachusetts 






University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



r 



CONTENTS. 



Pack 

L Fault-Finding 7 

II. Irritability ....... 53 

III. Repression 91 

IV. Persistence 133 

V. Intolerance 176 

VI. Discourtesy 218 

VII. Exactingness 249 



LITTLE FOXES 



FAULT-FINDING. 

" ipAPA, what are you going to give us 
this winter for our evening readings?" 
said Jennie. 

"I am thinking, for one thing," I replied, 
"of preaching a course of household sermons 
from a very odd text prefixed to a discourse 
which I found at the bottom of the pamphlet- 
barrel in the garret." 

"Don't say sermon, Papa, — it has such a 
dreadful sound ; and on winter evenings one 
wants something entertaining." 

"Well, treatise, then," said I, "or discourse, 
or essay, or prelection ; I *m not particular 
as to words." 



8 Little Foxes. 

"But what is the queer text that you found 
at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel ? " 

"It was one preached upon by your moth- 
er's great-great-grandfather, the very savory 
and much-respected Simeon Shuttleworth, *on 
the occasion of the melancholy defections and 
divisions among the godly in the town of West 
Dofield ' ; and it runs thus, — ' Take us the 
foxes ^ the little foxes y that spoil the vines : for 
our vines have tender grapes! " 

" It 's a curious text enough ; but I can't 
imagine what you are going to make of it." 

" Simply an essay on Little Foxes," said I ; 
" by which I mean those unsuspected, unwatched, 
insignificant little causes, that nibble away do- 
mestic happiness, and make home less than so 
noble an institution should be. 

" You may build beautiful, convenient, attrac- 
tive houses, — you may hang the walls with 
lovely pictures and stud them with gems of Art ; 
and there may be living there together persons 
bound by blood and affection in one common 



Fault-Fmdi7ig. 9 

interest, leading a life common to themselves 
and apart from others ; and these persons may- 
each one of them be possessed of good and noble 
traits ; there may be a common basis of affec- 
tion, of generosity, of good principle, of religion ; 
and yet, through the influence of some of these 
perverse, nibbling, insignificant little foxes, half 
the clusters of happiness on these so promising 
vines may fail to come to maturity. A little 
community of people, all of whom would be will- 
ing to die for each other, may not be able to 
live happily together ; that is, they may have 
far less happiness than their circumstances, their 
fine and excellent traits, entitle them to expect, 

" The reason for this in general is that home 
is a place not only of strong affections, but of 
entire unreserves ; it is life's undress rehearsal, 
its back-room, its dressing-room, from which we 
go forth to more careful and guarded inter- 
course, leaving behind us much debris of cast- 
off and every-day clothing. Hence has arisen 
the common proverb, * No man is a hero to his 



10 Little Foxes. 

valet-de-cJiainhre' ; and the common warning, 
* If you wish to keep your friend, don't go and 
live with him.'" 

" Which is only another way of saying," said 
my wife, " that we are all human and imperfect ; 
and the nearer you get to any human being, the 
more defects you see. The characters that can 
stand the test of daily intimacy are about as 
numerous as four-leaved clovers in a meadow ; 
in general, those who do not annoy you with 
positive faults bore you with their insipidity. 
The evenness and beauty of a strong, well-de- 
fined nature, perfectly governed and balanced, 
is about the last thing one is likely to meet with 
in one's researches into life." 

" But what I have to say," replied I, " is this, 
— that, family-life being a state of unreserve, a 
state in which there are few of those barriers 
and veils that keep people in the world from 
seeing each other's defects and mutually jarring 
and grating upon each other, it is remarkable 
that it is entered upon and maintained generally 



Fault-Finding. 1 1 

with less reflection, less care and forethought, 
than pertain to most kinds of business which 
men and women set their hands to. A man 
does not undertake to run an engine or manage 
a piece of machinery without some careful ex- 
amination of its parts and capabilities, and some 
inquiry whether he have the necessary knowl- 
edge, skill, and strength to make it do itself 
and him justice. A man does not try to play on 
the violin without seeing if his fingers are long 
and flexible enough to bring out the harmonies 
and raise his performance above the grade of 
dismal scraping to that of divine music. What 
should we think of a man who should set a 
whole orchestra of instruments upon playing 
together without the least provision or fore- 
thought as to their chord, and then howl and 
tear his hair at the result } It is not the fault 
of the instruments that they grate harsh thun- 
ders together ; they may each be noble and of 
celestial temper ; but united without regard to 
their nature, dire confusion is the result. Still 



12 Little Foxes. 

worse were it, if a man were supposed so stupid 
as to expect of each instrument a role opposed 
to its nature, — if he asked of the octave-flute a 
bass solo, and condemned the trombone because 
it could not do the work of the many-voiced 
violin. 

" Yet just so carelessly is the work of forming 
a family often performed. A man and woman 
come together from some affinity, some partial 
accord of their nature which has inspired mu- 
tual affection. There is generally very little 
careful consideration of who and what they are, 
— no thought of the reciprocal influence of mu- 
tual traits, — no previous chording and testing 
of the instruments which are to make lifelong 
harmony or discord, — and after a short period 
of engagement, in which all their mutual rela- 
tions are made as opposite as possible to those 
which must follow marriage, these two furnish 
their house and begin life together. 

"Then in many cases the domestic roof is 
supposed at once to be the proper refuge for 



Fault-Fi7tding. 13 

relations and friends on both sides, who also are 
introduced into the interior concert without any 
special consideration of what is likely to be the 
operation of character on character, the play of 
instrument with instrument ; — then follow chil- 
dren, each of whom is a separate entity, a sepa- 
rate will, a separate force in the circle ; and 
thus, with the lesser powers of servants and 
dependants, a family is made up. And there 
is no wonder if all these chance-assorted instru- 
ments, playing together, sometimes make quite 
as much discord as harmony. For if the hus- 
band and wife chord, the wife's sister or hus- 
band's mother may introduce a discord ; and 
then again, each child of marked character in- 
troduces another possibility of confusion. 

"The conservative forces of human nature 
are so strong and so various, that with all these 
drawbacks the family state is after all the best 
and purest happiness that earth affords. But 
then, with cultivation and care, it might be a 
great deal happier. Very fair pears have been 



14 Little Foxes. 

raised by dropping a seed into a good soil and 
letting it alone for years ; but finer and choicer 
are raised by the watchings, tendings, prunings 
of the gardener. Wild grape-vines bore very 
fine grapes, and an abundance of them„ before 
our friend Dr. Grant took up his abode at lona, 
and, studying the laws of Nature, conjured up 
new species of rarer fruit and flavor out of the 
old. And so, if all the little foxes that infest 
our domestic vine and fig-tree were once hunted 
out and killed, we might have fairer clusters 
and fruit all winter." 

"But, Papa," said Jennie, "to come to the 
foxes ; let 's know what they are." 

"Well, as the text says, little foxes, the pet 
foxes of good people, unsuspected little ani- 
mals, — on the whole, often thought to be really 
creditable little beasts, that may do good, and 
at all events cannot do much harm. And as I 
have taken to the Puritanic order in my dis- 
course, I shall set them in sevens, as Noah did 
his clean beasts in the ark. Now my seven 



Fault-Finding. 1 5 

little foxes are these : — Fault-Finding, Intoler- 
ance, Reticence, Irritability, Exactingness, Dis- 
courtesy, Self- Will. And here," turning to my 
sermon, "is what I have to say about the first 
of them." 

FA ULT-FINDING,— 

A most respectable little animal, that many 
people let run freely among their domestic 
vines, under the notion that he helps the 
growth of the grapes, and is the principal 
means of keeping them in order. 

Now it may safely be set down as a maxim, 
that nobody likes to be found fault with, but 
everybody likes to find fault when things do 
not suit him. 

Let my courteous reader ask him or herself 
if he or she does not experience a relief and 
pleasure in finding fault with or about what- 
ever troubles them. 

This appears at first sight an anomaly in 
the provisions of Nature. Generally we are 



1 6 L it tie Foxes. 

so constituted that what it is a pleasure^ to us 
to do it is a pleasure to our neighbor to have 
us do. It is a pleasure to give, and a pleasure 
to receive. It is a pleasure to love, and a pleas- 
ure to be loved ; a pleasure to admire, a pleas- 
ure to be admired. It is a pleasure also to 
find fault, but not a pleasure to be found fault 
with. Furthermore, those people whose sensi- 
tiveness of temperament leads them to find the 
most fault are precisely those who can least 
bear to be found fault with ; they bind heavy 
burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them 
on other men's shoulders, but they themselves 
cannot bear the weight of a finger. 

Now the difficulty in the case is this : There 
are things in life that need to be altered ; and 
that .things may be altered, they must be spoken 
of to the people whose business it is to make 
the change. This opens wide the door of 
fault-finding to well-disposed people, and gives 
them latitude of conscience to impose on their 
fellows all the annoyances which they them- 



Fmilt-Findmg. 17 

selves feel. The father and mother of a family 
are fault-finders, ex officio ; and to them flows 
back the tide of every separate individual's com- 
plaints in the domestic circle, till often the 
whole air of the house is chilled and darkened 
by a drizzling Scotch mist of querulousness. 
Very bad are these mists for grape-vines, and 
produce mildew in many a fair cluster. 

Enthusius falls in love with Hermione, be- 
cause she looks like a moonbeam, — because 
she is ethereal as a summer cloud, spiritiielle. 
He commences forthwith the perpetual adora- 
tion system that precedes marriage. He as- 
sures her that she is too good for this world, 
too delicate and fair for any of the uses of pqor 
mortaUty, — that she ought to tread on roses, 
sleep on the clouds, — that she ought never to 
shed a tear, know a fatigue, or make an exer- 
tion, but live apart in some bright, ethereal 
sphere worthy of her charms. All which is 
duly chanted in her ear in moonlight walks or 
sails, and so often repeated that a sensible girl 



1 8 Little Foxes. 

may be excused for believing that a little of it 
may be true. 

Now comes marriage, — and it turns out that 
Enthusius is very particular as to his coffee, 
that he is excessively disturbed if his meals 
are at all irregular, and that he cannot be com- 
fortable with any table arrangements which do 
not resemble those of his notable mother, lately 
deceased in the odor of sanctity ; he also wants 
his house in perfect order at all hours. Still 
he does not propose to provide a trained house- 
keeper ; it is all to be effected by means of cer- 
tain raw Irish girls, under the superintendence 
of this angel who was to tread on roses, sleep 
on clouds, and never know an earthly care. 
Neither has Enthusius ever considered it a 
part of a husband's duty to bear personal in- 
conveniences in silence. He would freely shed 
his blood for Hermione, — nay, has often franti- 
cally proposed the same in the hours of court- 
ship, when of course nobody wanted it done, 
and it could answer no manner of use ; but 



Fault-Findmg. 19 

now to the idyllic dialogues of that period 
succeed such as these : — 

" My dear, this tea is smoked : can't you get 
Jane into the way of making it better ? " 

"My dear, I have tried; but she will not 
do as I tell her." 

"Well, all I know is, other people can have 
good tea, and I should think we might." 

And again at dinner: — 

" My dear, this mutton is overdone again ; 
it is always overdone." 

"Not always, dear, because you recollect on 
Monday you said it was just right." 

"Well, ahnost always." 

"Well, my dear, the reason to-day was, I 
had company in the parlor, and could not go 
out to caution Bridget, as I generally do. It 's 
very difficult to get things done with such a 

girl." 

"My mother's things were always well done, 
no matter what her girl was." 

Again: "My dear, you must speak to the 



20 . Little Foxes, 

servants about wasting the coal. I never saw 
such a consumption of fuel in a family of our 
size"; or, "My dear, how can you let Maggie 
tear the morning paper ? " or, " My dear, I shall 
actually have to give up coming to dinner, if 
my dinners cannot be regular"; or, "My dear, 
I wish you would look at the way my shirts 
are ironed, — it is perfectly scandalous " ; or, 
" My dear, you must not let Johnnie finger the 
mirror in the parlor" ; or, " My dear, you must 
stop the children from playing in the garret " ; 
or, " My dear, you must see that Maggie does n't 
leave the mat out on the railing when she 
sweeps the front hall " ; and so on, up stairs 
and down stairs, in the lady's chamber, in attic, 
garret, and cellar, "my dear" is to see that 
nothing goes wrong, and she is found fault 
with when anything does. 

Yet Enthusius, when occasionally he finds 
his sometime angel in tears, and she tells him 
he does not love her as he once did, repudi- 
ates the charge with all his heart, and declares 



Fault-Finding. 2 1 

he loves her more than ever, — and perhaps 
he does. The only difficulty is that she has 
passed out of the plane of moonshine and po- 
etry into that of actualities. While she was 
considered an angel, a star, a bird, an evening 
cloud, of course there was nothing to be found 
fault with in her ; but now that the angel has 
become chief business-partner in an earthly 
working firm, relations are different. Enthu- 
sius could say the same things over again under 
the same circumstances, but unfortunately now 
they never are in the same circumstances. En- 
thusius is simply a man who is in the habit 
of speaking from impulse, and saying a thing 
merely and only because he feels it at the mo- 
ment. Before marriage he worshipped and 
adored his wife as an ideal being dwelling in 
the land of dreams and poetries, and did his 
very best to make her unpractical and unfitted 
to enjoy the life to which he was to introduce 
her after marriage. After marriage he still 
yields unreflectingly to present impulses, which 



22 Little Foxes. 

are no longer to praise, but to criticise and 
condemn. The very sensibility to beauty and 
love of elegance, which made him admire her 
before marriage, now transferred to the arrange- 
ment of the domestic menage^ lead him daily 
to perceive a hundred defects and find a hun- 
dred annoyances. 

Thus far we suppose an amiable, submissive 
wife, who is only grieved, not provoked, — who 
has no sense of injustice, and meekly strives to 
make good the hard conditions of her lot. Such 
poor, little, faded women have we seen, looking 
for all the world like plants that have been 
nursed and forced into bloom in the steam-heat 
of the conservatory, and are now sickly and 
yellow, dropping leaf by leaf, in the dry, dusty 
parlor. 

But there is another side of the picture, — 
where the wife, provoked and indignant, takes 
up the fault-finding trade in return, and with 
the keen arrows of her woman's wit searches 
and penetrates every joint of the husband's 



Fault-Finding. 23 

armor, showing herself full as unjust and far 
more capable in this sort of conflict 

Saddest of all sad things is it to see two 
once very dear friends employing all that pe- 
culiar knowledge of each other which love 
had given them only to harass and provoke, — 
thrusting and piercing with a certainty of aim 
that only past habits of confidence and affec- 
tion could have put in their power, wounding 
their own hearts with every deadly thrust they 
make at one another, and all for such inexpres- 
sibly miserable trifles as usually form the open- 
ings of fault-finding dramas. 

For the contentions that loosen the very 
foundations of love, that crumble away all its 
fine traceries and carved work, about what mis- 
erable, worthless things do they commonly be- 
gin ! — a dinner underdone, too much oil con- 
sumed, a newspaper torn, a waste of coal or 
soap, a dish broken ! — and for this miserable 
sort of trash, very good, very generous, very 
religious people will sometimes waste and throw 



24 Little Foxes. 

away by double-handfuls the very thing for 
which houses are built and coal burned, and 
all the paraphernalia of a home established, — 
their happiness. Better cold coffee, smoky tea, 
burnt meat, better any inconvenience, any loss, 
than a loss of love ; and nothing so surely burns 
away love as constant fault-finding. 

For fault-finding once allowed as a habit be- 
tween two near and dear friends comes in time 
to establish a chronic soreness, so that the 
mildest, the most reasonable suggestion, the 
gentlest implied reproof, occasions burning irri- 
tation ; and when this morbid stage has once 
set in, the restoration of love seems wellnigh 
impossible. 

For example : Enthusius, having risen this 
morning in the best of humors, in the most 
playful tones begs Hermione not to make the 
tails of her g's quite so long ; and Hermione 
fires up with — 

" And, pray, what else would n*t you wish 
me to do } Perhaps you would be so good, 



Fault-Finding. " 25 

when you have leisure, as to make out an 
alphabetical list of the things in me that need 
correcting." 

" My dear, you are unreasonable." 
" I don't think so. I should like to get to 
the end of the requirements of my lord and 
master sometimes." 

" Now, my dear, you really are very silly." 
" Please say something original, my dear. I 
have heard that till it has lost the charm of 
novelty." 

" Come now, Hermione, don't let 's quarrel." 
" My dear sir, who thinks of quarrelling } Not 
I ; I 'm sure I was only asking to be directed. 
I trust some time, if I live to be ninety, to suit 
your fastidious taste. I trust the coffee is right 
this morning, and the tea, and the toast, and 
the steak, and the servants, and the front-hall 
mat, and the upper-story hall-door, and the base- 
ment premises ; and now I suppose I am to 
be trained in respect to my general education. 
I shall set about the tails of my g's at once, but 



26 Little Foxes, 

trust you will prepare a list of any other little 
things that need emendation." 

Enthusius pushes away his coffee, and drums 
on the table. 

" If I might be allowed one small criticism, 
my dear, I should observe that it is not good 
manners to drum on the table," says his fair 
opposite. 

" Hermione, you are enough to drive a man 
frantic ! " exclaims Enthusius, rushing out with 
bitterness in his soul, and a determination to 
take his dinner at Delmonico's. 

Enthusius feels himself an abused man, and 
thinks there never was such a sprite of a wo- 
man, — the most utterly unreasonable, pro- 
voking human being he ever met with. What 
he does not think of is, that it is his own incon- 
siderate, constant fault-finding that has made 
every nerve so sensitive and sore, that the 
mildest suggestion of advice or reproof on the 
most indifferent subject is impossible. He has 
not, to be sure, been the guilty partner in this 



Faidt-Fiiiding. 2 J 

morning's encounter ; he has said only what 
is fair and proper, and she has been unreason- 
able and cross ; but, after all, the fault is re- 
motely his. 

When Enthusius awoke, after marriage, to 
find in his Hermione in very deed only a bird, 
a star, a flowei, but no housekeeper, why did he 
not face the matter like an honest man ? Why 
did he not remember all the fine things about 
dependence and uselessness with which he had 
been filling her head for a year or two, and in 
common honesty exact no more from her than 
he had bargained for? Can a bird make a 
good business-manager ? Can a flower oversee 
Biddy and Mike, and impart to their uncircum- 
cised ears the high crafts and mysteries of ele- 
gant housekeeping ? 

If his little wife has to learn her domestic 
role of household duty, as most girls do, by a 
thousand mortifications, a thousand perplexities, 
a thousand failures, let him, in ordinary fair- 
ness, make it as easy to her as possible. Let 



28 Little Foxes 

him remember with what admiring smiles, be- 
fore marriage, he received her pretty professions 
of utter helplessness and incapacity in domestic 
matters, finding only poetry and grace in what, 
after marriage, proved an annoyance. 

And if a man finds that he has a wife ill 
adapted to wifely duties, does it follow that the 
best thing he can do is to blurt out, without 
form or ceremony, all the criticisms and cor- 
rections which may occur to him in the many 
details of household life ? He would not dare 
to speak with as little preface, apology, or cir- 
cumlocution to his business manager, to his 
butcher, or his baker. When Enthusius was a 
bachelor, he never criticised the table at his 
boarding-house without some reflection, and 
studying to take unto himself acceptable words 
whereby to soften the asperity of the criticism. 
The laws of society require that a man should 
qualify, soften, and wisely time his admonitions* 
to those he meets in the outer world, or they 
will turn again and rend him. But to his own 



Fault-Finding. 29 

wife, ill his own house and home, he can find 
fault without ceremony or softening. So he 
can ; and he can awake, in the course of a 
year or two, to find his wife a changed woman, 
and his home unendurable. He may find, too, 
that unceremonious fault-finding is a game that 
two can play at, and that a woman can shoot 
her arrows with far more precision and skill 
than a man. 

But the fault lies not always on the side of 
the husband. Quite as often is a devoted, pa- 
tient, good-tempered man harassed and hunted 
and baited by the inconsiderate fault-finding of 
a wife whose principal talent seems to lie in the 
ability at first glance to discover and make 
manifest the weak point in everything. 

We have seen the most generous, the most 
warm-hearted and obliging of mortals, under 
this sort of training, made the most morose 
and disobliging of husbands. Sure to be found 
fault with, whatever they do, they have at last 
ceased doing. The disappointment of not pleas- 
ing they have abated by not trying to please. 



30 Little Foxes. 

We once knew a man who married a spoiled 
beauty, whose murmurs, exactions, and caprices 
were infinite. He had at last, as a refuge to 
his wearied nerves, settled down into a habit 
of utter disregard and neglect ; he treated her 
wishes and her complaints with equal indiffer- 
ence, and went on with his life as nearly as 
possible as if she did not exist. He silently 
provided for her what he thought proper, with- 
out troubhng himself to notice her requests or 
listen to her grievances. Sickness came, but 
the heart of her husband was cold and gone ; 
there was no sympathy left to warm her. Death 
came, nnd he breathed freely as a man re- 
leased. He married again, — a woman with no 
beauty, but much love and goodness, — a wo- 
man who asked little, blamed seldom, and then 
with all the tact and address which the utmost 
though tfuln ess could devise ; and the passive, 
negligent husband became the attentive, devot- 
ed slave of her will. He was in her hands 
^^ clay in the hands of the potter ; the 



Fatilt-Findiitg, 3 r 

least breath or suggestion of criticism from her 
lips, who criticised so little and so thoughtfully, 
weighed more with him than many outspoken 
words. So different is the same human being, 
according to the touch of the hand which plays 
upon him ! 

I have spoken hitherto of fault-finding as 
between husband and wife : its consequences 
are even worse as respects children. The habit 
once suffered to grow up between the two that 
constitute the head of the family descends and 
runs through all the branches. Children are 
more hurt by indiscriminate, thoughtless fault- 
finding than by any other one thing. Often a 
child has all the sensitiveness and all the sus- 
ceptibility of a grown person, added to the 
faults of childhood. Nothing about him is 
right as yet ; he is immature and faulty at all 
points, and everybody feels at perfect liberty 
to criticise him to right and left, above, below, 
and around, till he takes refuge either in cal- 
lous hardness or irritable moroseness. 



32 Little Foxes. 

A bright, noisy boy rushes in from school, 
eager to tell his mother something he has on 
his heart, and Number One cries out, — ''O, 
you Ve left the door open ! I do wish you 
would n't always leave the door open ! And do 
look at the mud on your shoes ! How many 
times must I tell you to wipe your feet?" 

" Now there you Ve thrown your cap on the 
sofa again. When will you learn to hang it 
up?" 

" Don't put your slate there ; that is n't the 
place for it." 

" How dirty your hands are ! what have you 
been doing ? " 

"Don't sit in that chair; you break the 
springs, jouncing." 

" Child, how your hair looks ! Do go up 
stairs and comb it." 

"There, if you haven't torn the braid all 
off your coat ! Dear me, what a boy ! " 

" Don't speak so loud ; yo iir voice goes 
through my head." 



Fault-Findmg. 33 

"I want to know, Jim, if it was you that 
broke up that barrel that I have been saving 
for brown flour." 

"I believe it was you, Jim, that hacked the 
edge of my razor." 

" Jim 's been writing at my desk, and blotted 
three sheets of the best paper." 

Now the question is, if any of the grown 
people of the family had to run the gantlet of 
a string of criticisms on themselves equally 
true as those that salute unlucky Jim, would 
they be any better-natured about it than he is 1 

No ; but they are grown-up people ; they 
have rights that others are bound to respect. 
Everybody cannot tell them exactly what he 
thinks about everything they do. If every one 
could and did, would there not be terrible re- 
actions } 

Servants in general are only grown-up chil- 
dren, and the same considerations apply to 
them. A raw, untrained Irish girl introduced 
into an elegant house has her head bewildered 

2* O 



34 Little Foxes. 

in every direction. There are the gas-pipes, 
the watei -pipes, the whole paraphernalia of ele- 
gant and delicate conveniences, about which a 
thousand little details are to be learned, the 
neglect of any one of which may flood the 
house, or poison it with foul air, or bring innu- 
merable inconveniences. The setting of a gen- 
teel table and the waiting upon it involve fifty 
possibilities of mistake, each one of which will 
grate on the nerves of a whole family. There 
is no wonder, then, that the occasions of fault- 
finding in families are so constant and harass- 
ing ; and there is no wonder that mistress and 
maid often meet each other on the terms of 
the bear and the man who fell together fifty 
feet down from the limb of a high tree, and 
lay at the bottom of it, looking each other in 
the face in helpless, growling despair. The 
mistress is rasped, irritated, despairing, and with 
good reason : the maid is the same, and with 
equally good reason. Yet let the mistress be 
suddenly introduced into a printing-office, and 



Fault-Finding. 35 

required, with what little teaching could be 
given her in a few rapid directions, to set up 
the editorial of a morning paper, and it is prob- 
able she would be as stupid and bewildered as 
Biddy in her beautifully arranged house. 

There are elegant houses which, from causes 
like these, are ever vexed like the troubled sea 
that cannot rest Literally, their table has be- 
come a snare before them, and that which 
should have been for their welfare a trap. 
Their gas and their water and their fire and 
their elegances and ornaments, all in unskilled, 
blundering hands, seem only so many guns in 
the hands of Satan, through which he fires at 
their Christian graces day and night, — so that, 
if their house is kept in order, their temper 
and religion are not. 

I am speaking now to the consciousness of 
thousands of women who are in will and pur- 
pose real saints. Their souls go up to heaven, 
— its love, its purity, its rest, — with every 
hymn and prayer and sacrament in church ; 



36 Little Foxes. 

and they come home to be mortified, disgraced, 
and made to despise themselves, for the un- 
lovely tempers, the hasty words, the cross looks, 
the universal nervous irritability, that result 
from this constant jarring of finely toned chords 
under unskilled hands. 

Talk of hair-cloth shirts, and scourgings, and 
sleeping on ashes, as means of saintship ! there 
is no need of them in our country. Let a 
woman once look at her domestic trials as her 
hair-cloth, her ashes, her scourges, — accept 
them, — rejoice in them, — smile and be quiet, 
silent, patient, and loving under them, — and 
the convent can teach her no more ; she is a 
victorious saint. 

When the damper of the furnace is turned 
the wrong way by Paddy, after the five hun- 
dredth time of explanation, and the whole fam- 
ily awakes coughing, sneezing, strangling, — 
when the gas is blown out in the nursery by 
Biddy, who has been instructed every day for 
weeks in the danger of such a proceeding, — 



Fault-Finding. 37 

when the tumblers on the dinner-table are 
found dim and streaked, after weeks of train- 
ing in the simple business of washing and wip- 
ing, — when the ivory-handled knives and forks 
are left soaking in hot dish-water, after inces- 
sant explanations of the consequences, — when 
four or five half-civilized beings, above, below, 
and all over the house, are constantly forget- 
ting the most important things at the very 
moment it is most necessary they should re- 
member them, — there is no hope for the mis- 
tress morally, unless she can in very deed and 
truth accept her trials religiously, and conquer 
by accepting. It is not apostles alone who 
can take pleasure in necessities and distresses, 
but mothers and housewives also, if they would 
learn of the Apostle, might say, "When I am 
weak, then am I strong." 

The burden ceases to gall when we have 
learned how to carry it. We can suffer pa- 
tiently, if we see any good come of it, and 
say, as an old black woman of our acquaint- 



38 Little Foxes. 

ince did of an event that crossed her purpose, 
" Well, Lord, if it 's yoUy send it along." 

But that this may be done, that home-life, 
in our unsettled, changing state of society, may 
become peaceful and restful, there is one Chris- 
tian grace, much treated of by mystic writers, 
that must return to its honor in the Christian 
Church. I mean, — the grace of silence. 

No words can express, no tongue can tell, 
the value of not speaking. "Speech is sil- 
vern, but silence is golden," is an old and very 
precious proverb. 

" But," say many voices, " what is to become 
©f us, if we may not speak } Must we not 
correct our children and our servants and each 
other 1 Must we let people go on doing wrong 
to the end of the chapter.^" 

No ; fault must be found ; faults must be 
told, errors corrected. Reproof and admoni- 
tion are duties of householders to their fami- 
lies, and of all true friends to one another. 

But, gentle reader, let us look over life, our 



Fault-Finding. 39 

own lives and the lives of others, and ask, How 
much of the fault-finding which prevails has the 
least tendency to do any good ? How much of 
It is vrell-timed, well-pointed, deliberate, and 
just, so spoken as to be effective ? 

" A wise reprover upon an obedient ear " is 
one of the rare things spoken of by Solomon, 
— the rarest, perhaps, to be met with. How 
many really religious people put any of their 
religion into their manner of performing this 
most difficult office ? We find fault with a 
stove or furnace which creates heat only to go 
up chimney and not warm the house. We say 
it is wasteful. Just so wasteful often seem 
prayer-meetings, church-services, and sacra- 
ments ; they create and excite lovely, gentle, 
holy feelings, — but, if these do not pass out 
into the atmosphere of daily life, and warm and 
clear the air of our homes, there is a great 
waste in our religion. 

We have been on our knees, confessing hum- 
bly that we are as awkward in heavenly things, 



40 Little Foxes. 

as unfit for the Heavenly Jerusalem, as Biddy 
and Mike, and the little beggar-girl on our 
door-steps, are for our parlors. We have de- 
plored our errors daily, hourly, and confessed 
that "the remembrance of them is grievous 
unto us, the burden of them is intolerable," and 
then we draw near in the sacrament to that 
Incarnate Divinity whose infinite love covers 
all our imperfections with the mantle of His 
perfections. But when we return, do we take 
our servants and children by the throat because 
they are as untrained and awkward and care- 
less in earthly things as we have been in heav- 
enly ? Does no remembrance of Christ's infinite 
patience temper our impatience, when we have 
spoken seventy times seven, and our words have 
been disregarded } There is no mistake as to 
the sincerity of the religion which the Church 
excites. What we want is to have it used in 
common life, instead of going up like hot air 
in a fireplace to lose itself in the infinite abysses 
above. 



Fault-Fmding. 41 

In reproving and fault-finding, we have beau- 
tiful examples in Holy Writ. When Saint Paul 
has a reproof to administer to delinquent Chris- 
tians, how does he temper it with gentleness 
and praise ! how does he first make honorable 
note of all the good there is to be spoken of! 
how does he give assurance of his prayers and 
love ! — and when at last the arrow flies, it 
goes all the straighter to the mark for this 
carefulness. 

But there was a greater, a purer, a lovelier 
than Paul, who made His home on earth with 
twelve plain men, ignorant, prejudiced, slow to 
learn, — and who to the very day of His death 
were still contending on a point which He had 
repeatedly explained, and troubling His last 
earthly hours with the old contest, "Who should 
be greatest." When all else failed, on His knees 
before them as their servant, tenderly perform- 
ing for love the office of a slave, he said, " If I, 
your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, 
ye also ought to wash one another's feet." 



42 Little Foxes. 

When parents, employers, and masters learn 
to reprove in this spirit, reproofs will be more 
effective than they now are. It was by the 
exercise of this spirit that Fenelon transformed 
the proud, petulant, irritable, selfish Duke of 
Burgundy, making him humble, gentle, tolerant 
of others, and severe only to himself: it was 
he who had for his motto, that " Perfection 
alone can bear with imperfection." 

But apart from the fault-finding which has a 
definite aim, how much is there that does not 
profess or intend or try to do anything more 
than give vent to an irritated state of feeling ! 
The nettle stings us, and we toss it with both 
hands at our neighbor ; the fire burns us, and 
we throw coals and hot ashes at all and sun- 
dry of those about us. 

There is fretfulness, a mizzling, drizzling rain 
of discomforting remark ; there is grumblmgy 
a northeast storm that never clears ; there is 
scoldingy the thunder-storm with lightning and 
hail. All these are worse than useless ; they 



Fault-Finding. 43 

are positive sinSy by whomsoever indulged, — 
IRns as great and real as many that are shud- 
dered at in polite society. 

All these are for the most part but the vent- 
ing on our fellow-beings of morbid feelings re- 
sulting from dyspepsia, overtaxed nerves, or 
general ill health. 

A minister eats too much mince-pie, goes to 
nis weekly lecture, and, seeing only half a dozen 
people there, proceeds to grumble at those half- 
dozen for the sins of such as stay away. "The 
Church is cold, there is no interest in religion," 
and so on : a simple outpouring of the blues. 

You and I do in one week the work we 
ought to do in six ; we overtax nerve and brain, 
and then have weeks of darkness in which 
everything at home seems running to destruc- 
tion. The servants never were so careless, the 
children never so noisy, the house never so 
disorderly, the State never so ill-governed, the 
Church evidently going over to Antichrist. 
The only thing, after all, in wliich the existing 



44 Little Foxes. 

condition of affairs dififers from that of a week 
ago is, that we have used up our nervous ^- 
ergy, and are looking at the world through 
blue spectacles. We ought to resist the devil 
of fault-finding at this point, and cultivate si- 
lence as a grace till our nerves are rested. 
There are times when no one should trust 
himself to judge his neighbors, or reprove his 
children and servants, or find fault with his 
friends, — for he is so sharp-set that he cannot 
strike a note without striking too hard. Then 
is the time to try the grace of silence, and, 
what is better than silence, the power of 
prayer. 

But it being premised that we are never to 
fret, never to grumble, never to scold, and yet 
it being our duty in some way to make known 
and get rectified the faults of others, it remains 
to ask how ; and on this head we will impro- 
vise a parable of two women. 

Mrs. Standfast is a woman of high tone, and 
possessed of a power of moral principle that 



Fault-Finding. 45 

impresses one even as sublime. All her per- 
ceptions of right and wrong are clear, exact, 
and minute ; she is charitable to the poor, kind 
to the sick and suffering, and devoutly and 
earnestly religious. In all the minutiae of wo- 
man s life she manifests an inconceivable pre- 
cision and perfection. Everything she does, is 
perfectly done. She is true to all her promises 
to the very letter, and so punctual that rail- 
road time might be kept by her instead of a 
chronometer. 

Yet, with all these excellent traits, Mrs. Stand- 
fast has not the faculty of making a happy 
home. She is that most hopeless of fault-find- 
ers, — a fault-finder from principle. She has a 
high, correct standard for everything in the 
world, from the regulation of the thoughts 
down to the spreading of a sheet or the hem- 
ming of a towel ; and to this exact standard 
she feels it her duty to bring every one in her 
household. She does not often scold, she is 
not actually fretful, but she exercises over her 



46 Little Foxes, 

household a calm, inflexible severity, rebuking 
every fault ; she overlooks nothing, she excuses 
nothing, she will accept of nothing in any part 
of her domain but absolute perfection ; and her 
reproofs are aimed with a true and steady 
point, and sent with a force that makes them 
felt by the most obdurate. 

Hence, though she is rarely seen out of tem- 
per, and seldom or never scolds, yet she drives 
every one around her to despair by the use of 
the calmest and most elegant English. Her 
servants fear, but do not love her. Her hus- 
band, an impulsive, generous man, somewhat 
inconsiderate and careless in his habits, is at 
times perfectly desperate under the accumulat- 
ed load of her disapprobation. Her children 
regard her as inhabiting some high, distant, un- 
approachable mountain-top of goodness, whence 
she is always looking down with reproving eyes 
on naughty boys and girls. They wonder how 
it is that so excellent a mamma should have 
children who, let them try to be good as hard 



Fault-Finding. 47 

as they can, are always sure to do something 
dreadful every day. 

The trouble with Mrs. Standfast is, not that 
she has a high standard, and not that she pur- 
poses and means to bring every one up to it, 
but that she does not take the right way. She 
has set it down in her mind that to blame a 
wrong-doer is the only way to cure wrong. 
She has never learned that it is as much her 
duty to praise as to blame, and that people are 
drawn to do right by being praised when they 
do it, rather than driven by being blamed when 
they do not. 

Right across the way from Mrs. Standfast 
is Mrs. Easy, a pretty little creature, with not 
a tithe of her moral worth, — a merry, pleas- 
ure-loving woman, of no particular force of 
principle, whose great object in life is to 
avoid its disagreeables and to secure its pleas- 
ures. 

Little Mrs. Easy is adored by her husband, 
her children, her servants, merely because it 



48 Little Foxes. 

is her nature to say pleasant things to every 
one. It is a mere tact of pleasing, which she 
uses without knowing it. While Mrs. Stand- 
fast, surveying her well-set dining-table, runs 
her keen eye over everything, and at last 
brings up with, "Jane, look at that black spot 
on the salt-spoon ! I am astonished at your 
carelessness ! " — Mrs. Easy would say, " Why, 
Jane, where did you learn to set a table so 
nicely } All looking beautifully, except, — ah ! 
let 's see, — just give a rub to this salt-spoon ; — 
now all is quite perfect." Mrs. Standfast's ser- 
vants and children hear only of their failures ; 
these are always before them and her. Mrs. 
Easy's servants hear of their successes. She 
praises their good points ; tells them they are 
doing well in this, that, and the other partic- 
ular ; and finally exhorts them, on the strength 
of having done so many things well, to im- 
prove in what is yet lacking. Mrs. Easy's 
husband feels that he is always a hero in her 
eyes, and her children feel that they are dear 



Fault-Finding. 49 

good children, notwithstanding Mrs. Easy some- 
times has her little tiffs of displeasure, and 
scolds roundly when something falls out as it 
should not. 

The two families show how much more may 
be done by a very ordinary woman, through 
the mere instinct of praising and pleasing, 
than by the greatest worth, piety, and princi- 
ple, seeking to lift human nature by a lever 
that never was meant to lift it by. 

The faults and mistakes of us poor human 
beings are as often perpetuated by despair as 
by any other one thing. Have we not all 
been burdened by a consciousness of faults 
that we were slow to correct because we felt 
discouraged } Have we not been sensible of 
a real help sometimes from the presence of a 
friend who thought well of us, believed in us, 
set our virtues in the best light, and put our 
faults in the background } 

Let us depend upon it, that the flesh and 
blood that are in us, — the needs, the wants, 

3 D 



50 Little Foxes. 

the despondencies, — are in each of our fellows, 
in every awkward servant and careless child. 

Finally, let us all resolve, — 

First, to attain to the grace of silence. 

Second, to deem all fault-finding that does 
no good a sin ; and to resolve, when we are 
happy ourselves, not to poison the atmosphere 
for our neighbors by calling on them to remark 
every painful and disagreeable feature of their 
daily life. 

Third, to practise the grace and virtue of 
PRAISE. We have all been taught that it is 
our duty to praise God, but few of us have 
reflected on our duty to praise men ; and yet 
for the same reason that we should praise the 
divine goodness it is our duty to praise human 
excellence. 

We should praise our friends, — our near and 
dear ones ; we should look on and think of 
their virtues till their faults fade away ; and 
when we love most, and see most to love, then 
only is the wise time wisely to speak of what 
should still be altered. 



Fault-Finding. 5 1 

Parents should look out for occasions to com- 
mend their children, as carefully as they seek 
to reprove their faults ; and employers should 
praise the good their servants do as strictly 
as they blame the evil. 

Whoever undertakes to use this weapon will 
find that praise goes farther in many cases 
than blame. Watch till a blundering servant 
does something well, and then praise him for 
it, and you will see a new fire lighted in the 
eye, and often you will find that in that one 
respect at least you have secured excellence 
thenceforward. 

When you blame, which should be seldom, 
let it be alone with the person, quietly, con- 
siderately, and with all the tact you are pos- 
sessed of. The fashion of reproving children 
and servants in the presence of others cannot 
be too much deprecated. Pride, stubbornness, 
and self-will are aroused by this, while a more 
private reproof might be received with thank- 
fulness. 



52 Little Foxes. 

As a general rule, I would say, treat children 
in these respects just as you would grown peo- 
ple ; they are grown people in miniature, and 
need as careful consideration of their feelings 
as any of us. 

Lastly, let us all make a bead-roll, a holy 
rosary, of all that is good and agreeable in 
our position, our surroundings, our daily lot, 
of all that is good and agreeable in our friends, 
our children, our servants, and charge ourselves 
to repeat it daily, till the habit of our minds 
be to praise and to commend ; and so doing, 
we shall catch and kill one Little Fox who 
hath destroyed many tender grapes. 



II. 

IRRITABILITY. 

r T was that Christmas-day that did it ; I 'm 
quite convinced of that ; and the way it 
was is, what I am going to tell you. 

You see, among the various family customs 
of us Crowfields, the observance of all sorts of 
fetes and festivals has always been a matter 
of prime regard ; and among all the festivals 
of the round ripe year, none is so joyous and 
honored among us as Christmas. 

Let no one upon this prick up the ears of 
Archaeology, and tell us that by the latest cal- 
culations of chronologists our ivy-grown and 
holly-mantled Christmas is all a hum, — that 
it has been demonstrated, by all sorts of signs 
and tables, that the august event it celebrates 
did not take place on the 25th of December 
Supposing it be so, what have we to do with 



54 Little Foxes. 

that? If so awful, so joyous an event ever 
took place on our earth, it is surely worth com- 
memoration. It is the evejit we celebrate, not 
the time. And if all Christians for eighteen 
hundred years, while warring and wrangling 
on a thousand other points, have agreed to 
give this one 25 th of December to peace and 
good-will, who is he that shall gainsay them, 
and for an historic scruple turn his back on 
the friendly greetings of all Christendom ? 
Such a man is capable of re-writing Milton's 
Christmas Hymn in the style of Sternhold and 
Hopkins. 

In our house, however, Christmas has always 
been a high day, a day whose expectation has 
held waking all the little eyes in our bird's 
nest, when as yet there were only little ones 
there, each sleeping with one eye open, hoping 
to be the happy first to wish the merry Christ- 
mas and grasp the wonderful stocking. 

This year our whole family train of married 
girls and boys, with the various toddling tribes 



Irritability. 5 5 

thereto belonging, held high festival around a 
wonderful Christmas-tree, the getting-up and 
adorning of which had kept my wife and Jen- 
nie and myself busy for a week beforehand. 
If the little folks think these trees grow up in 
a night, without labor, they know as little about 
them as they do about most of the other bless- 
ings which rain down on their dear little 
thoughtless heads. Such scrambling and clam- 
bering and fussing and tying and untying, such 
alterations and rearrangements, such agilities 
in getting up and down and everywhere to tie 
on tapers and gold balls and glittering things 
innumerable, to hang airy dolls in graceful posi- 
tions, to make branches bear stiffly up under 
loads of pretty things which threaten to make 
the tapers turn bottom upward ! 

Part and parcel of all this was I, Christo- 
pher, most reckless of rheumatism, most care- 
less of dignity, — the round, bald top of my 
head to be seen emerging everywhere from 
the thick boughs of the spruce, now devising 



56 Little Foxes. 

an airy settlement for some gossamer-robed 
doll, now adjusting far back on a stiff branch 
Tom's new little skates, now balancing bags 
of sugar-plums and candy, and now combating 
desperately with some contumacious taper that 
would turn slantwise or crosswise, or anywise 
but upward, as a Christian taper should, — re- 
gardless of Mrs. Crowfield's gentle admonitions 
and suggestions, sitting up to most dissipated 
hours, springing out of bed suddenly to change 
some arrangement in the middle of the night, 
and up long before the lazy sun at dawn to 
execute still other arrangements. If that 
Christmas-tree had been a fort to be taken, 
or a campaign to be planned, I could not 
have spent more time and strength on it. My 
zeal so far outran even that of sprightly Miss 
Jennie, that she could account for it only by 
saucily suggesting that papa must be fast get- 
ting into his second childhood. 

But did n't we have a splendid lighting-up } 
Did n't I and my youngest grandson, little 



Irritability. 5 7 

Tom, head the procession magnificent in paper 
soldier-caps, blowing tin trumpets and beating 
drums, as we marched round the twinkling glo- 
ries of our Christmas-tree, all glittering with 
red and blue and green tapers, and with a 
splendid angel on top with great gold wings, 
the cutting-out and adjusting of which had 
held my eyes waking for nights before ? I had 
had oceans of trouble with that angel, owing to 
an unlucky sprain in his left wing, which had 
required constant surgical attention through the 
week, and which I feared might fall loose again 
at the important and blissful moment of exhi- 
bition : but no, the Fates were in our favor ; 
the angel behaved beautifully, and kept his 
wings as crisp as possible, and the tapers all 
burned splendidly, and the little folks were as 
crazy with delight as my most ardent hopes 
could have desired ; and then we romped and 
played and frolicked as long as little eyes could 
keep open, and long after ; and so passed away 
our Christmas. 
3* 



58 Little Foxes, 

I had forgotten to speak of the Christmas- 
dinner, that solid feast of fat things, on which 
we also luxuriated. Mrs. Crowfield outdid all 
household traditions in that feast : the turkey 
and the chickens, the jellies and the sauces, 
the pies and the pudding, behold, are they not 
written in the tablets of Memory which remain 
to this day.^ 

The holidays passed away hilariously, and at 
New- Year's I, according to time-honored cus- 
tom, went forth to make my calls and see my 
fair friends, while my wife and daughters stayed 
at home to dispense the hospitalities of the day 
to their gentlemen friends. All was merry, 
cheerful, and it was agreed on all hands that a 
more joyous holiday season had never flown 
over us. 

But, somehow, the week after, I began to be 
sensible of a running-down in the wheels. I 
had an article to write for the "Atlantic," but 
felt mopish and could not write. My dinner 
had not its usual relish, and I had an in- 



Irritability. 59 

definite sense everywhere of something going 
wrong. My coal bill came in, and I felt sure 
we were being extravagant, and that our John 
Furnace wasted the coal. My grandsons and 
granddaughters came to see us, and I discov- 
ered that they had high-pitched voices, and 
burst in without wiping their shoes, and it sud- 
denly occurred powerfully to my mind that 
they were not being well brought up, — evi- 
dently, they were growing up rude and noisy. 
I discovered several tumblers and plates with 
the edges chipped, and made bitter reflections 
on the carelessness of Irish servants ; — our 
crockery was going to destruction, along with 
the rest. Then, on opening one of my paper- 
drawers, I found that Jennie's one drawer of 
worsted had overflowed into two or three ; 
Jennie was growing careless ; besides, worsted 
is dear, and girls knit away small fortunes, 
without knowing it, on little duds that do no- 
body any good. Moreover, Maggie had three 
times put my slippers into the hall-closet, in- 



6o Little Foxes. 

stead of leaving them where I wanted, under 
my study-table. Mrs. Crowfield ought to look 
after things more ; every servant, from end to 
end of the house, was getting out of the traces ; 
it was strange she did not see it. 

All this I vented, from time to time, in short, 
crusty sayings and doings, as freely as if I 
had n't just written an article on " Little Foxes " 
in the last " Atlantic," till at length my eyes 
were opened on my own state and condition. 

It was evening, and I had just laid up the 
fire in the most approved style of architecture, 
and, projecting my feet into my slippers, sat 
spitefully cutting the leaves of a caustic review. 

Mrs. Crowfield took the tongs and altered 
the disposition of a stick. 

" My dear," I said, " I do wish you d let the 
fire alone, — you always put it out." 

" I was merely admitting a little air between 
the sticks," said my wife. 

" You always make matters worse, when you 
touch the fire." 



Irritability. 6i 

As if in contradiction, a bright tongue of 
flame darted up between the sticks, and the 
fire began chattering and snapping defiance at 
me. Now, if tliere 's anything which would 
provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and snapped 
at in that way by a man's own fire. It's an 
unbearable impertinence. I threw out my leg 
impatiently, and hit Rover, who yelped a yelp 
that finished the upset of my nerves. I gave 
him a hearty kick, that he might have some- 
thing to yelp for, and in the movement upset 
Jennie's embroidery-basket. 

" Oh, papa ! " 

" Confound your baskets and balls ! they are 
everywhere, so that a man can't move ; useless, 
wasteful things, too." 

" Wasteful } " said Jennie, coloring indig- 
nantly ; for if there 's anything Jennie piques 
herself upon, it 's economy. 

" Yes, wasteful, — wasting time and money 
both. Here are hundreds of shivering poor to 
be clothed, and Christian females sit and do 



62 Little Foxes. 

nothing but crochet worsted into useless knick- 
nacks. If they would be working for the poor, 
there would be some sense in it. But it's all 
just alike, no real Christianity in the world, — 
nothing but organized selfishness and self-indul- 
gence." 

" My dear," said Mrs. Crowfield, " you are not 
well to-night. Things are not quite so despe- 
rate as they appear. You have n't got over 
Christmas-week." 

" I mn well. Never was better. But I can 
see, I hope, what 's before my eyes ; and the 
fact is, Mrs. Crowfield, things must not go on 
as they are going. There must be more care, 
more attention to details. There 's Maggie, — 
that girl never does what she is told. You are 
too slack with her. Ma'am. She will light the 
fire with the last paper, and she won't put my 
slippers in the right place ; and I can't have 
my study made the general catch-all and mena- 
gerie for Rover and Jennie, and her baskets and 
balls, and for all the family litter." 



Irritability. 63 

Just at this moment I overheard a sort of 
aside from Jennie, who was swelUng with re- 
pressed indignation at my attack on her wors- 
ted. She sat with her back to me, knitting en- 
ergetically, and said, in a low, but very decisive 
tone, as she twitched her yarn, — 

" Now if / should talk in that way, people 
would call me cross, — and that 's the whole 
of it." 

I pretended to be looking into the fire in an 
absent-minded state ; but Jennie's words had 
started a new idea. Was that it .'* Was that 
the whole matter } Was it, then, a fact, that 
the house, the servants, Jennie and her wors- 
teds. Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going 
on pretty much as usual, and that the only dif- 
ficulty was that I was cross ? How many times 
had I encouraged Rover to lie just where he 
was lying when I kicked Irim! How many 
times, in better moods, had I comphmented 
Jennie on her neat little fancy-works, and de- 
clared that I liked the social companionship of 



64 Little Foxes. 

ladies' work-baskets among my papers ! Yes, it 
was clear. After all, things were much as they 
had been ; only I was cross. 

Cross. I put it to myself in that simple, old- 
fashioned word, instead of saying that I was 
out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the 
other smooth phrases with which we good 
Christians cover up our little sins of temper. 
" Here you are, Christopher," said I to myself, 
"a literary man, with a somewhat delicate ner- 
vous organization and a sensitive stomach, and 
you have been eating like a sailor or a plough- 
man ; you have been gallivanting and merry- 
making and playing the boy for two weeks ; up 
at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all sorts 
of boyish performances ; and the consequence 
is, that, like a thoughtless young scapegrace, 
you have used up in ten days the capital of 
nervous energy that was meant to last you ten 
weeks. You can't eat your cake and have 
it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid, 
source of cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensa- 



Irritability. 65 

tions and pleasant views, is all spent, you can't 
feel cheerful ; things cannot look as they did 
when you were full of life and vigor. When 
the tide is out, there is nothing but unsightly, 
ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can't help it ; but 
you can keep your senses, — you can know 
what is the matter with you, — you can keep 
from visiting your overdose of Christmas mince- 
pies and candies and jocularities on the heads 
of Mrs. Crowfield, Rover, and Jennie, whether 
m the form of virulent morality, pungent criti- 
cisms, or a free kick, such as you just gave 
the poor brute." 

" Come here, Rover, poor dog ! " said I, ex- 
tending my hand to Rover, who cowered at 
the farther corner of the room, eying me wist- 
fully, — "come here, you poor doggie, and make 
up with your master. There, there ! Was his 
master cross 1 Well, he knows it. We must 
forgive and forget, old boy, must n't we } " And 
Rover nearly broke his own back and tore me 
to pieces with his tumultuous tail-waggings. 



66 Little Foxes. 

*'As for you, puss," I said to Jennie, "I am 
much obliged to you for your free suggestion. 
You must take my cynical moralities for what 
they are worth, and put your little traps into 
as many of my drawers as you like." 

In short, I made it up handsomely all around, 
— even apologizing to Mrs. Crowfield, who, by 
the by, has summered and wintered me so 
many years, and knows all my little seams and 
crinkles so well, that she took my irritable, un- 
reasonable spirit as tranquilly as if I had been 
a baby cutting a new tooth. 

" Of course, Chris, I knew what the matter 
was ; don't disturb yourself," she said, as I be- 
gan my apology ; " we understand each other. 
But there is one thing I have to say ; and 
that is, that your article ought to be ready." 

" Ah, well, then," said I, " like other great 
writers, I shall make capital of my own sins, 
and treat of the second little family fox ; and 
his name is — 



Irritability. 6/ 

IRRITABILITY. 

Irritability is, more than most unlovely 
states, a sin of the flesh. It is not, like envy, 
malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may 
suppose to belong equally to an embodied or 
a disembodied spirit. In fact, it comes nearer 
to being physical depravity than anything I 
know of There are some bodily states, some 
conditions of the nerves, such that we could 
not conceive of even an angelic spirit confined 
in a body thus disordered as being able to do 
any more than simply endure. It is a state 
of nervous torture ; and the attacks which the 
wretched victim makes on others are as much 
a result of disease as the snapping and biting 
of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia. 

Then, again, there are other people who go 
through life loving and beloved, desired in ev- 
ery circle, held up in the Church as exam- 
ples of the power of religion, who, after all, de- 
serve no credit for these things. Their spirits 



68 Little Foxes. 

are lodged in an animal nature so tranquil, 
so cheerful, all the sensations which come to 
them are so fresh and vigorous and pleasant, 
that they cannot help viewing the world char- 
itably and seeing everything through a glori- 
fied medium. The ill-temper of others does 
not provoke them ; perplexing business never 
sets their nerves to vibrating ; and all their 
lives long they walk in the serene sunshine of 
perfect animal health. 

Look at Rover there. He is never nervous, 
never cross, never snaps or snarls, and is ready, 
the moment after the grossest affront, to wag 
the tail of forgiveness, — all because kind Na- 
ture has put his dog's body together so that 
it always works harmoniously. If every person 
in the world were gifted with a stomach and 
nerves like his, it would be a far better and 
happier world, no doubt. The man said a 
good thing who made the remark, that the 
foundation of all intellectual and moral worth 
must be laid in a good healthy animal. 



Irritability. 69 

Now 1 think it is undeniable that the peace 
and happiness of the home-circle are very gen- 
erally much invaded by the recurrence in its 
members of these states of bodily irritability. 
Every person, if he thinks the matter over, will 
see that his condition in life, the character of 
his friends, his estimate of their virtues and 
failings, his hopes and expectations, are all 
very much modified by these things. Cannot 
we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, 
persecuted individuals, all whose friends were 
unreasonable, whose life was full of trials and 
crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-sing- 
ing morning to find all these illusions gone 
with the fogs of the night "i Our friends are 
nice people, after all ; the little things that an- 
noyed us look ridiculous by bright sunshine ; 
and we are fortunate individuals. 

The philosophy of life, then, as far as this 
matter is concerned, must consist of two things : 
first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily 
states ; and, second, to understand and con 



yo Little Foxes. 

trol these states, when we cannot ward them 
off. 

Of course, the first of these is the most im- 
portant ; and yet, of all things, it seems to be 
least looked into and understood. We find 
abundant rules for the government of the 
tongue and temper ; it is a slough into which, 
John Bunyan hath it, cart-loads of wholesome 
instructions have been thrown ; but how to get 
and keep that healthy state of brain, stomach, 
and nerves which takes away the temptation 
to ill-temper and anger is a subject which 
moral and religious teachers seem scarcely to 
touch upon. 

Now, without running into technical, physi- 
ological language, it is evident, as regards us 
human beings, that there is a power by which 
we live and move and have our being, — by 
which the brain thinks and wills, the stomach 
digests, the blood circulates, and all the differ- 
ent provinces of the little man-kingdom do 
their work. This something — call it nervous 



Irritability. 71 

fiuid, nervous power, vital energy, iife-force, or 
anything else that you will — is a perfectly un- 
derstood, if not a definable thing. It is plain, 
too, that people possess this force in very dif- 
ferent degrees ; some generating it as a high- 
pressure engine does steam, and using it con- 
stantly, with an apparently inexhaustible flow ; 
and others who have little, and spend it quickly. 
We have a common saying, that this or that 
person is soon used up. Now most nervous, 
irritable states of temper are the mere physical 
result of a used-up condition. The person has 
overspent his nervous energy, — like a man 
who should eat up on Monday the whole food 
which was to keep him for a week, and go 
growling and faint through the other days ; or 
the quantity of nervous force which was wanted 
to carry on the whole system in all its parts 
is seized on by some one monopolizing portion, 
and used up to the loss and detriment of the 
rest. Thus, with men of letters, an exorbitant 
brain expends on its own workings what be- 



72 Little Foxes. 

longs to the other offices of the body : the 
stomach has nothing to carry on digestion ; the 
secretions are badly made ; and the imperfectly 
assimilated nourishment, that is conveyed to 
every little nerve and tissue, carries with it an 
acrid, irritating quality, producing general rest- 
lessness and discomfort. So men and women 
go struggling on through their threescore and 
ten years, scarcely one in a thousand knowing 
through life that perfect balance of parts, that 
appropriate harmony of energies, that make a 
healthy, kindly animal condition, predisposing 
to cheerfulness and good-will. 

We Americans are, in the first place, a ner- 
vous, excitable people. Multitudes of children, 
probably the great majority in the upper walks 
of life, are born into the world with weaknesses 
of the nervous organization, or of the brain or 
stomach, which make them incapable of any 
strong excitement or prolonged exertion with- 
out some lesion or derangement ; so that they 
are continually being checked, laid up, and 



Irritability. 73 

made invalids in the midst of their days. Life 
here in America is so fervid, so fast, our cU- 
mate is so stimulating, with its clear, bright 
skies, its rapid and sudden changes of tempera- 
ture, that the tendencies to nervous disease are 
constantly aggravated. 

Under these circumstances, unless men and 
women make a conscience, a religion, of saving 
and sparing something of themselves expressly 
for home-life and home-consumption, it must 
follow that home will often be merely a sort of 
refuge for us to creep into when we are used 
up and irritable. 

Papa is up and off, after a hasty breakfast, 
and drives all day in his business, putting into 
it all there is in him, letting it drink up brain 
and nerve and body and soul, and coming home 
jaded and exhausted, so that he cannot bear 
the cry of the baby, and the frolics and patter- 
ing of the nursery seem horrid and needless 
confusion. The little ones say, in their plain 
vernacular, " Papa is cross." 
4 



74 Little Foxes, 

Mamma goes out to a party that keeps her 
up till one or two in the morning, breathes bad 
air, eats indigestible food, and the next day is 
so nervous that every straw and thread in her 
domestic path is insufferable. 

Papas that pursue business thus day after 
day, and mammas that go into company, as it 
is called, night after night, what is there left 
in or of them to make an agreeable fireside 
with, to brighten their home and inspire their 
children ? 

True, the man says he cannot help himself, 
— business requires it. But what is the need 
of rolling up money at the rate at which he is 
seeking to do it 1 Why not have less, and take 
some time to enjoy his home, and cheer up his 
wife, and form the minds of his children .^ Why 
spend himself down to the last drop on the 
world, and give to the dearest friends he has 
only the bitter dregs t 

Much of the preaching which the pulpit and 
the Church have levelled at fashionable amuse- 



Irritability. 75 

ments has failed of any effect at all, because 
wrongly put. A cannonade has been opened 
upon dancing, for example, and all for reasons 
that will not, in the least, bear looking into. 
It is vain to talk of dancing as a sin because 
practised in a dying world where souls are 
passing into eternity. If dancing is a sin for 
this reason, so is playing marbles, or frolicking 
with one's children, or enjoying a good dinner, 
or doing fifty other things which nobody ever 
dreamed of objecting to. 

If the preacher were to say that anything is 
a sin which uses up the strength we need for 
daily duties, and leaves us fagged out and irrita- 
ble at just those times and in just those places 
when and where we need most to be healthy, 
cheerful, and self-possessed, he would say a 
thing that none of his hearers would dispute. 
If he should add, that dancing-parties, begin- 
ning at ten o'clock at night and ending at four 
o'clock in the morning, do use up the strength, 
weaken the nerves, and leave a person wholly 



76 Little Foxes, 

unfit for any home duty, he would als!) be say- 
ing what very few people would deny ; and 
then his case would be made out. If he should 
say that it is wrong to breathe bad air and fill 
the stomach with unwholesome dainties, so as 
to make one restless, ill-natured, and irritable 
for days, he would also say what few would 
deny, and his preaching might have some hope 
of success. 

The true manner of judging of the worth of 
amusements is to try them by their effects on 
the nerves and spirits the day after. True 
amusement ought to be, as the word indicates, 
recitation, — something that refreshes, turns us 
out anew, rests the mind and body by change, 
and gives cheerfulness and alacrity to our re- 
turn to duty. 

The true objection to all stimulants, alcoholic 
and narcotic, consists simply in this, — that 
they are a form of overdraft on the nervous 
energy, which helps us to use up in cne hour 
the strength of whole days. 



Irritahility. 77 

A man uses up all the fair, legal interest of 
nervous power by too much business, too much 
care, or too much amusement. He has now a 
demand to meet. He has a complicate ac- 
count to make up, an essay or a sermon to 
write, and he primes himself by a cup of coffee, 
a cigar, a glass of spirits. This is exactly the 
procedure of a man who, having used the in- 
terest of his money, begins to dip into the 
principal. The strength a man gets in this 
way is just so much taken out of his life- 
blood ; it is borrowing of a merciless creditor, 
who will exact, in time, the pound of flesh 
nearest his heart. 

Much of the irritability which spoils home 
happiness is the letting-down from the over- 
excitement of stimulus. Some will drink cof^ 
fee, when they own every day that it makes 
them nervous ; some will drug themselves with 
tobacco, and some with alcohol, and, for a few 
hours of extra brightness, give themselves and 
their friends many hours when amiability or 



^S Little Foxes. 

agreeableness is quite out of the question. 
There are people calling themselves Chris- 
tians who live in miserable thraldom, forever 
m debt to Nature, forever overdrawing on their 
just resources, and using up their patrimony, 
because they have not the moral courage to 
break away from a miserable appetite. 

The same may be said of numberless indul- 
gences of the palate, which tax the stomach 
beyond its power, and bring on all the hor- 
rors of indigestion. It is almost impossible for 
a confirmed dyspeptic to act like a good Chris- 
tian ; but a good Christian ought not to be- 
come a confirmed dyspeptic. Reasonable self- 
control, abstaining from all unseasonable indul- 
gence, may prevent or put an end to dyspep- 
sia, and many suffer and make their friends 
suffer only because they will persist in eating 
what they know is hurtful to them. 

But it is not merely in worldly business, or 
fashionable amusements, or the gratification of 
appetite, that people are tempted to overdraw 



Irritability. 79 

and use up in advance their life-force. It is 
done in ways more insidious, because con- 
nected with our moral and religious faculties. 
There are religious exaltations beyond the reg- 
ular pulse and beatings of ordinary nature, 
that quite as surely gravitate downward into 
the mire of irritability. The ascent to the 
third heaven lets even the Apostle down to a 
thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to 
buffet him. 

It is the temptation of natures in which the 
moral faculties predominate to overdo in the 
outward expression and activities of religion 
till they are used up and irritable, and have no 
strength left to set a good example in domes- 
tic life. 

The Reverend Mr. X. in the pulpit to-day 
appears with the face of an angel ; he soars 
away into those regions of exalted devotion 
where his people can but faintly gaze after 
him ; hs tells them of the victory that over- 
cometh the world, of an unmoved faith that 



8o Little Foxes. 

fears no evil, of a serenity of love that no out* 
ward event can ruffle ; and all look after him 
and wonder, and wish they could so soar. 

Alas ! the exaltation which inspires these 
sublime conceptions, these celestial ecstasies, 
is a double and treble draft on Nature, — and 
poor Mrs. X. knows, when she hears him 
preaching, that days of miserable reaction are 
before her. He has been a fortnight driving 
before a gale of strong excitement, doing all 
the ti"ie twice or thrice as much as in his 
ordinary state he could, and sustaining him- 
self by the stimulus of strong coffee. He has 
preached or exhorted every night, and con- 
versed with religious inquirers every day, seem- 
ing to himself to become stronger and stronger, 
because every day more and more excitable 
and excited. To his hearers, with his flushed 
sunken cheek and his glittering eye, he looks 
like some spiritual being just trembling on his 
flight for upper worlds ; but to poor Mrs. X., 
whose husband he is, things wear a very dif- 



Irritability. 8 1 

ferent aspect. Her woman and mother in- 
stincts tell her that he is drawing on his life- 
capital with both hands, and that the hours of 
a terrible settlement must come, and the days 
of darkness will be many. He who spoke so 
beautifully of the peace of a soul made perfect 
will not be able to bear the cry of his baby or 
the pattering feet of any of the poor little X.s, 
who must be sent 

"Anywhere, anywhere, 
Out of his sight " ; 

he who discoursed so devoutly of perfect trust 
in God will be nervous about the butcher's bill, 
sure of going to ruin because both ends of the 
salary don't meet ; and he who could so admir- 
ingly tell of the silence of Jesus under provoca- 
tion will but too often speak unadvisedly with 
his lips. Poor Mr. X. will be morally insane 
for days or weeks, and absolutely incapable of 
preaching Christ in the way that is the most 
effective, by setting Him forth in his own daily 
example. 



S2 Little Foxes. 

What then ? must we not do the work of the 
Lord ? 

Yes, certainly ; but the first work of the 
Lord, that for which provision is to be made 
in the first place, is to set a good example as 
a Christian man. Better labor for years stead- 
ily, diligently, doing every day only what the 
night's rest can repair, avoiding those cheating 
stimulants that overtax Nature, and illustrating 
the sayings of the pulpit by the daily life in 
the family, than to pass life in exaltations and 
depressions, resulting from overstrained labors, 
supported by unnatural stimulus. 

The same principles apply to hearers as to 
preachers. Religious services must be judged 
of like amusements, by their effect on the life. 
If an overdose of prayers, hymns, and sermons 
leaves us tired, nervous, and cross, it is only 
not quite as bad as an overdose of fashionable 
folly. 

It could be wished that in every neighbor- 
hood there might be one or two calm, sv/eet. 



Irritability, 83 

daily services which should morning and even- 
ing unite for a few solemn moments the hearts 
of all as in one family, and feed with a constant, 
unnoticed, daily supply the lamp of faith and 
love. Such are some of the daily prayer-meet- 
ings which for eight or ten years past have held 
their even tenor in some of our New England 
cities, and such the morning and evening ser- 
vices which we are glad to see obtaining in the 
Episcopal churches. Everything which brings 
religion into habitual contact with life, and 
makes it part of a healthy, cheerful average 
living, we hail as a sign of a better day. Noth- 
ing is so good for health as daily devotion. It 
is the best soother of the nerves, the best an- 
tidote to care ; and we trust erelong that all 
Christian people will be of one mind in this, 
and that neighborhoods will be families gather- 
ing daily around one altar, praying not for 
themselves merely, but for each other. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is this : 
Set apart some provision to make merry with 



84 Little Foxes. 

at home, and guard that reserve as religiously 
as the priests guarded the shew-bread in the 
temple. However great you are, however good, 
however wide the general interests that you 
may control, you gain nothing by neglecting 
home-duties. You must leave enough of your- 
self to be able to bear and forbear, give and 
forgive, and be a source of life and cheerfulness 
around the hearthstone. The great sign given 
by the Prophets of the coming of the Millen- 
nium is, — what do you suppose 1 — " He shall 
turn the heart of the fathers to the children, 
and the heart of the children to their fathers, 
lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." 

Thus much on avoiding unhealthy, irritable 
states. 

But it still remains that a large number of 
people will be subject to them unavoidably for 
these reasons. 

First. The use of tobacco, alcohol, and other 
kindred stimulants, for so many generations, 
has vitiated the brain and nervous system of 



Irritability. 85 

modern civilized races so that it is not what 
it was in former times. Michelet treats of 
this subject quite at large in some of his late 
works ; and we have to face the fact of a gen- 
eration born with an impaired nervous organiz- 
ation, who will need constant care and wis- 
dom to avoid unhealthy, morbid irritation. 

There is a temperament called the hypo- 
chondriac, to which many persons, some of 
them the brightest, the most interesting, the 
most gifted, are born heirs, — a want of balance 
of the nervous powers, which tends constantly 
to periods of high excitement and of conse- 
quent depression, — an unfortunate inheritance 
for the possessor, though accompanied often 
with the greatest talents. Sometimes, too, it 
is the unfortunate lot of those who have not 
talents, who bear its burdens and its anguish 
without its rewards. 

People of this temperament are subject to 
fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irri- 
tability and suffering, which darken the aspect 



S6 Little Foxes. 

of the whole world to them, which present 
lymg reports of their friends, of themselves, of 
the circumstances of their life, and of all with 
which they have to do. 

Now the highest philosophy for persons thus 
afflicted is to understand themselves and their 
tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom 
and depression are just as much a form of dis- 
ease as a fever or a toothache, to know that it 
is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind 
with wretched illusions, to make them seem 
miserable and unlovely to themselves, to make 
their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, 
to make all events appear to be going wrong 
and tending to destruction and ruin. 

The evils and burdens of such a tempera- 
ment are half removed when a man once knows 
that he has it and recognizes it for a disease, 
and when he does not trust himself to speak 
and act in those bitter hours as if there were 
any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. 
He who has not attained to this wisdom over- 



Irritability. Sy 

whelms his friends and his family with the 
waters of bitterness ; he stings with unjust ac- 
cusations, and makes his fireside dreadful with 
fancies which are real to him, but false as the 
ravings of fever. 

A sensible person, thus diseased, who has 
found out what ails him, will shut his mouth 
resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark 
thoughts that infest his soul. 

A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was 
subject to these periods, once said to me, "My 
dear sir, there are times when I know I am 
possessed of the Devil, and then I never let 
myself speak." And so this wise woman carried 
her burden about with her in a determined, 
cheerful reticence, leaving always the impres- 
sion of a cheery, kindly temper, when, if she 
had spoken out a tithe of what she thought 
and felt in her morbid hours, she would have 
driven all her friends from her, and made others 
as miserable as she was herself She was a 
sunbeam, a life-giving presence in every family, 



S8 Little Foxes. 

by the power of self-knowledge and self-control. 
Such victories as this are the victories of real 
saints. 

But if the victim of these glooms is once 
tempted to lift their heavy load by the use of 
any stimulus whatever^ he or she is a lost man 
or woman. It is from this sad class more than 
any other that the vast army of drunkards and 
opium-eaters is recruited. Dr. Johnson, one of 
the most brilliant examples of the hypochon- 
driac temperament which literature affords, has 
expressed a characteristic of the race, in what 
he says of himself, that he could ^^ practise absti- 
nence but not TEMPERANCE." Hypochondriacs 
who begin to rely on stimulus, almost without 
exception find this to be true. They cannot, 
they will not be moderate. Whatever stimu- 
lant they take for relief will create an uncon- 
trollable appetite, a burning passion. The tem- 
perament itself lies in the direction of insanity. 
It needs the most healthful, careful, even regi- 
men and management to keep it within the 



Irritability. 89 

bounds of soundness ; but the introduction of 
stimulants deepens its gloom with the shadows 
of utter despair. 

All parents, in the education of their chil- 
dren, should look out for and understand the 
signs of this temperament. It appears in earl} 
childhood ; and a child inclined to fits of de 
pression should be marked as a subject of the 
most thoughtful, painstaking physical and moral 
training. All over-excitement and stimulus 
should be carefully avoided, whether in the 
way of study, amusement, or diet. Judicious 
education may do much to mitigate the una- 
voidable pains and penalties of this most unde- 
sirable inheritance. 

The second class of persons who need wis- 
dom in the control of their moods is that large 
class whose unfortunate circumstances make it 
impossible for them to avoid constantly over- 
doing and overdrawing upon their nervous en- 
ergies, and who therefore are always exhausted 
and worn out. Poor souls, who labor daily 



go Little Foxes. 

under a burden too hea\y for them, and whose 
fretfulness and impatience are looked upon with 
sorrow, not anger, by pitying angels. Poor 
mothers, with families of little children cling- 
ing round them, and a baby that never lets 
them sleep ; hard-working men, whose utmost 
toil, day and night, scarcely keeps the wolf 
from the door ; and all the hard-laboring, heavy- 
laden, on whom the burdens of life press far 
beyond their strength. 

There are but two things we know of for 
these, — two only remedies for the irritation 
that comes of these exhaustions ; the habit of 
silence towards men, and of speech towards 
God. The heart must utter itself or burst ; 
but let it learn to commune constantly and 
intimately with One always present and always 
sympathizing. This is the great, the only safe- 
guard against fretfulness and complaint. TLus 
and thus only can peace spring out of confu- 
sion, and the breaking chords of an overtaxed 
nature be strung anew to a celestial harmony 



Ill, 



REPRESSION. 

T AM going now to write on another cause 
of family unhappiness, more subtile than 
either of those before enumerated. 

In the General Confession of the Church, we 
poor mortals all unite in saying two things : 
"We have left undone those things which we 
ought to have done, and we have done those 
things which we ought not to have done." 
These two heads exhaust the subject of human 
frailty. 

It is the things left undone which we ought 
to have done, the things left unsaid which we 
ought to have said, that constitute the subject 
I am now to treat of 

I remember my school-day speculations over 
ar old " Chemistry " I used to study as a text- 
book, which informed me that a substance 



92 Little Foxes, 

called Caloric exists in all bodies. In some it 
exists in a latent state : it is there, but it af- 
fects neither the senses nor the thermometer. 
Certain causes develop it, when it raises the 
mercury and warms the hands. I remember 
the awe and wonder with which, even then, I 
reflected on the vast amount of blind, deaf, and 
dumb comfort which Nature had thus stowed 
away. How mysterious it seemed to me that 
poor families every winter should be shivering, 
freezing, and catching cold, when Nature had 
all this latent caloric locked up in her store- 
closet, — when it was all around them, in every- 
thing they touched and handled ! 

In the spiritual world there is an exact anal- 
ogy to this. There is a great life-giving, warm- 
ing power called Love, which exists in human 
hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no 
real life, no warming power, till set free by ex- 
pression. 

Did you ever, in a raw, chilly day, just be- 
fore a snow-storm, sit at work in a room that 



Repression. 93 

was judiciously warmed by an exact thermom- 
eter ? You do not freeze, but you shiver ; your 
fingers do not become numb with cold, but you 
have all the while an uneasy craving for more 
positive warmth. You look at the empty grate, 
walk mechanically towards it, and, suddenly 
awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing 
there. You long for a shawl or cloak ; you 
draw yourself within yourself; you consult the 
thermometer, and are vexed to find that there 
is nothing there to be complained of, — it is 
standing most provokingly at the exact temper- 
ature that all the good books and good doctors 
pronounce to be the proper thing, — the golden 
mean of health ; and yet perversely you shiver, 
and feel as if the face of an open fire would be 
to you as the smile of an angel. 

Such a lifelong chill, such an habitual shiver, 
is the lot of many natures, which are not warm, 
when all ordinary rules tell them they ought to 
be warm, — whose life is cold and barren and 
meagre, — which never see the blaze of an open 
fire. 



94 Little Foxes. 

I will illustrate my meaning by a page out 
of my own experience. 

I was twenty-one when I stood as grooms- 
man for my youngest and favorite sister Emily. 
I remember her now as she stood at the altar, — 
a pale, sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer 
between smiles and tears, looking out of va- 
pory clouds of gauze and curls and all the 
vanishing mysteries of a bridal morning. 

Everybody thought the marriage such a for- 
tunate one ! — for her husband was handsome 
and manly, a man of worth, of principle good 
as gold and solid as adamant, — and Emmy 
had always been such a flossy little kitten of 
a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensi- 
tive and nervous, we thought her kind, strong, 
composed, stately husband made just on pur- 
pose for her. " It was quite a Providence," 
sighed all the elderly ladies, who sniffed ten- 
derly, and wiped* their eyes, according to ap- 
proved custom, during the marriage ceremony. 

I remember now the bustle of the day, — 



Repression. 95 

the confused whirl of white gloves, kisses, bride- 
maids, and bride-cakes, the losing of trunk- 
keys and breaking of lacings, the tears of 
mamma — God bless her! — and the jokes of 
irreverent Christopher, who could, for the life 
of him, see nothing so very dismal in the 
whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he were 
as well off himself. 

And so Emmy was whirled away from us 
on the bridal tour, when her letters came back 
to us almost every day, just like herself, merry, 
frisky little bits of scratches, — as full of little 
nonsense-beads as a glass of Champagne, and 
all ending with telling us how perfect he was, 
and how good, and how well he took care of 
her, and how happy, etc., etc. 

Then came letters from her new home. His 
house was not yet built ; but while it was 
building, they were to live with his mother, who 
was " such a good woman," and his sisters, who 
were also "such nice women." 

But somehow, after this, a change came over 



96 Little Foxes. 

Emmy's letters. They grew shorter ; they 
seemed measured in their words ; and in place 
of sparkling nonsense and bubbling outbursts 
of glee, came anxiously worded praises of her 
situation and surroundings, evidently written 
for the sake of arguing herself into the belief 
that she was extremely happy. 

John, of course, was not as much with her 
now : he had his business to attend to, which 
took him away all day, and at night he was 
very tired. Still he was very good and thought- 
ful of her, and how thankful she ought to be ! 
And his mother was very good indeed, and did 
all for her that she could reasonably expect, — 
of course she could not be like her own mam- 
ma ; and Mary and Jane were very kind, — 
" in their way," she wrote, but scratched it out, 
and wrote over it, " very kind indeed." They 
were the best people in the world, — a great 
deal better than she was ; and she should try 
to learn a great deal from them. 

" Poor little Em ! " I said to myself, " I am 



Repressio7t. 97 

afraid these very nice people are slowly freez- 
ing and starving her." And so, as I was going 
up into the mountains for a summer tour, I 
thought I would accept some of John's many 
invitations and stop a day or two with them on 
my way, and see how matters stood. John had 
been known among us in college as a taciturn 
fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his 
friendship by a regular siege, carrying parallel 
after parallel, till, when I came into the fort at 
last, I found the treasures worth taking. 

I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evans's 
house. It was the house of the village, — a 
true, model, New England house, — a square, 
roomy, old-fashioned mansion, which stood on a 
hillside, under a group of great, breezy old 
elms, whose wide, wind-swung arms arched over 
it like a leafy firmament. Under this bower 
the substantial white house, with all its window- 
blinds closed, with its neat white fences all 
tight and trim, stood in its faultless green turfy 
yard, a perfect Pharisee among houses. It 



98 Little Foxes. 

looked like a house all finished, done, com- 
pleted, labelled, and set on a shelf for preserva- 
tion ; but, as is usual with this kind of edifice 
in our dear New England, it had not the slight- 
est appearance of being lived in, not a door or 
window open, not a wink or blink of life : the 
only suspicion of human habitation was the thin, 
pale-blue smoke from the kitchen-chimney. 

And now for the people in the house. 

In making a New England visit in winter, 
was it ever your fortune to be put to sleep in 
the glacial spare-chamber, that had been kept 
from time immemorial as a refrigerator for 
guests, — that room which no ray of daily sun- 
shine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds 
are closed the whole year round, whose fire- 
place knows only the complimentary blaze 
which is kindled a few moments before bed- 
time in an atmosphere where you can see your 
breath ? Do you remember the process of get- 
ting warm in a bed of most faultless material, 
with linen sheets and pillow-cases, slippery and 



Rep7'ession. 99 

cold as ice ? You did get warm at last, but you 
warmed your bed by giving out all the heat of 
your own body. 

Such are some families where you visit. 
They are of the very best quality, like your 
sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality 
you have to get them warmed up to the talk- 
ing-point. You think, the first hour after your 
arrival, that they must have heard some report 
to your disadvantage, or that you misunder- 
stood your letter of invitation, or that you came 
on the *wrong day ; but no, you find in due 
course that you were invited, you were ex- 
pected, and they are doing for you the best 
they know how, and treating you as they sup- 
pose a guest ought to be treated. 

If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow, and 
go on feeling your way discreetly, you gradually 
thaw quite a little place round yourself in the 
domestic circle, till, by the time you are ready 
iO leave, you really begin to think it is agree- 
able to stay, and resolve that you will come 



lOO Little Foxes. 

again. They are nice people ; they like you ; 
at last you have got to feeling at home with 
them. 

Three months after, you go to see them 
again, when, lo ! there you are, back again just 
w^here you were at first. The little spot which 
you had thawed out is frozen over again, and 
again you spend all your visit in thawing it 
and getting your hosts limbered and in a state 
for comfortable converse. 

The first evening that I spent in the wide, 
roomy front-parlor, with Judge Evans, his wife, 
and daughters, fully accounted for the change 
in Emmy's letters. Rooms, I verily believe, 
get saturated with the aroma of their spiritual 
atmosphere ; and there are some so stately, so 
correct, that they would paralyze even the 
friskiest kitten or the most impudent Scotch 
terrier. At a glance, you perceive, on enter- 
ing, that nothing but correct deportment, an 
erect posture, and strictly didactic conversa- 
tion is possible there. 



Repression. 10 1 

The family, in fact, were all eminently didac- 
tic, bent on improvement, laboriously useful. 
Not a good work or charitable enterprise could 
put forth its head in the neighborhood, of which 
they were not the support and life. Judge 
Evans was the stay and staff of the village 

and township of ; he bore up the pillars 

thereof Mrs. Evans was known in the gates 
for all the properties and deeds of the virtu- 
ous woman, as set forth by Solomon ; the heart 
of her husband did safely trust in her. But 
when I saw them, that evening, sitting, in 
erect propriety, in their respective corners each 
side of the great, stately fireplace, with its tall, 
glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned 
at either end with plated candlesticks, with 
the snuffer-tray in the middle, — she so col- 
lectedly measuring her words, talking in all 
those well-worn grooves of correct conversa- 
tion which are designed, as the phrase goes, 
to "entertain strangers," and the Misses Ev- 
ans, in the best of grammar and rhetoric, and 



T02 Little Foxes. 

in most proper time and way possible, show- 
ing themselves for what they were, most high- 
principled, well-informed, intelligent women, — 
I set myself to speculate on the cause of the 
extraordinary sensation of stiffness and restraint 
which pervaded me, as if I had been dipped 
in some petrifying spring and was beginning 
to feel myself slightly crusting over on the 
exterior. 

This kind of conversation is such as admits 
quite easily of one's carrying on another course 
of thought within ; and so, as I found myself 
like a machine, striking in now and then in 
good time and tune, I looked at Judge Evans, 
sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, 
and began to wonder if he had ever been a 
boy, a young man, — if Mrs. Evans ever was a 
girl, — if he was ever in love with her, and 
what he did when he was. 

I thought of the lock of Emmy's hair which 
I had observed in John's writing-desk in days 
when he was falling in love with her, — of sun- 



Repression. 1 03 

dry little movements in which at awkward mo- 
ments I had detected my grave and serious 
gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally 
upon the pair in moonlight strolls or retired 
corners, — and wondered whether the models 
of propriety before me had ever been convicted 
of any such human weaknesses. Now, to be 
sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs 
to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of 
any such bygone effusion in those dignified in- 
dividuals. But how did they get acquainted? 
how came they ever to be married } 

I looked at John, and thought I saw him 
gradually stiffening and subsiding into the very 
image of his father. As near as a young fel- 
low of twenty-five can resemble an old one of 
sixty-two, he was growing to be exactly like 
him, with the same upright carriage, the same 
silence and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: 
slie, too, was changed, — she, the wild little 
pet, all of whose pretty individualities were 
dear to us, — that little unpunctuated scrap of 



104 Little Foxes. 

life's poetry, full of little exceptions leferable 
to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under 
the wide score of poetic license. Now, as she 
sat between the two Misses Evans^ I thought 
I could detect a bored, anxious expression on 
her little mobile face, — an involuntary watch- 
fulness and self-consciousness, as if she were 
trying to be good on some quite new pattern. 
She seemed nervous about some of my jokes, 
and her eye went apprehensively to her mother- 
in-law in the comer ; she tried hard to laugh 
and m-.ke things go merrily for me ; she seemed 
sometimes to look an apology for me to them, 
and then again for them to me. For myself, 
I felt that pei"verse inclination to shock people 
which sometimes comes over one in such situ- 
ations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy 
on to my knee and commence a brotherly romp 
with her, to give John a thump on his very 
upright back, and to propose to one of the 
Misses Evans tc strike up a waltz, and get 
the parlor into a general whirl, before the very 



Repression, 105 

face and eyes of propriety in the corner: but 
" the spirits " were too strong for me ; I could n't 
do it. 

I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom 
with which Emmy used to treat her John in 
the days of their engagement, — the Httle ways, 
half loving, half mischievous, in which she 
alternately petted and domineered over him. 
Now she called him "Mr. Evans," with an anx- 
ious affectation of matronly gravity. Had they 
been lecturing her into these conjugal proprie- 
ties } Probably not. I felt sure, by what I 
now experienced in myself, that, were I to live 
in that family one week, all deviations from 
the one accepted pattern of propriety would 
fall off, like many-colored sumach-leaves after 
the first hard frost. I began to feel myself 
slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently 
chilly. I tried to tell a story, but had to 
mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air 
around me that parts of it were too vernacu- 
lar and emphatic ; and then, as a man who . 
5* 



io6 Little Foxes. 

is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw 
ofif the spell, and finds his brain beginning to 
turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, 
and was haunted with a desire to say some 
horribly improper or wicked thing which should 
start them all out of their chairs. Though 
never given to profane expressions, I perfectly 
hankered to let out a certain round, unvar- 
nished, wicked word, which I knew would cre- 
ate a tremendous commotion on the surface of 
this enchanted mill-pond, — in fact, I was so 
afraid that I should make some such mad dem- 
onstration, that I rose at an early hour and 
begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up with 
apparent relief, and offered to get my candle 
and marshal me to my room. 

When she had ushered me into the chilly 
hospitality of that stately apartment, she 
seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down 
the candle, ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled 
her little head under my coat, laughing and 
crying, and calling me her dear old boy ; she 



Repression. 10/ 

pulled my whiskers, pinched my ear, rum- 
maged my pockets, danced round me in a 
sort of wild joy, stunning me with a volley 
of questions, without stopping to hear the an- 
swer to one of them ; in short, the wild little 
elf of old days seemed suddenly to come back 
to me, as I sat down and drew her on to my 
knee. 

" It does look so like home to see you, Chris ! 
— dear, dear home ! — and the dear old folks ! 
There never, never was such a home ! — every- 
body there did just what they wanted to, didn't 
they, Chris? — and we love each other, don't 

we?" 

"Emmy," said I, suddenly, and very improp- 
erly, " you are n't happy here." 

" Not happy ? " she said, with a half-fright- 
ened look, — "what makes you say so? O, 
you are mistaken. I have everything to make 
me happy. I should be very unreasonable and 
wicked, if I were not. I am very, very happy, 
I assure you. Of course, you know, everybody 



io8 Little Foxes. 

can't be like our folks at home. That I should 
not expect, you know, — people's ways are dif- 
ferent, — but then, when you know people are 
so good, and all that, why, of course you must 
be thankful, be happy. It's better for me to 
learn to control my feelings, you know, and 
not give way to impulses. They are all so 
good here, they never give way to their feel- 
ings, — they always do right. O, they are quite 
wonderful ! " 

" And agreeable 1 " said I. 

" O Chris, we must n't think so much of 
that. They certainly are n't pleasant and easy, 
as people at home are ; but they are never 
cross, they never scold, they always are good. 
And we ought n't to think so much of living 
to be happy ; we ought to think more of doing 
right, doing our duty, don't you think so } " 

" All undeniable truth, Emmy ; but, for all 
that, John seems stiff as a ramrod, and their 
front-parlor is like a tomb. You must n't let 
them petrify him." 



Repression. 109 

Her face clouded over a little. 

"John is different here from what he was at 
our house. He has been brought up differ- 
ently, — O, entirely differently from what we 
were ; and when he comes back into the old 
house, the old business, and the old place be- 
tween his father and mother and sisters, he 
goes back into the old ways. He loves me all 
the same, but he does not show it in the same 
ways, and I must learn, you know, to take it 
on trust. He is very busy, — works hard all 
day, and all for me ; and mother says women 
are unreasonable that ask any other proof of 
love from their husbands than what they give 
by working for them all the time. She never 
lectures me, but I know she thought I was a 
silly little petted child, and she told me one day 
how she brought up John. She never petted 
him ; she put him away alone to sleep, from 
the time he was six months old ; she never fed 
him out of his regular hours when he was a 
baby, no matter how much he cried ; she never 



no Little Foxes. 

let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk 
talked to him, but was very careful to make 
him speak all his words plain from the very 
first ; she never encouraged him to express his 
love by kisses or caresses, but taught him that 
the only proof of love was exact obedience. I 
remember John's telling me of his running to 
her once and hugging her round the neck, 
when he had come in without wiping his shoes, 
and she took off his arms and said : * My son, 
this is n't the best way to show love. I should 
be much better pleased to have you come in 
quietly and wipe your shoes than to come and 
kiss me when you forget to do what I say.*" 

"Dreadful old jade!" said I, irreverently, be- 
ing then only twenty-three. 

" Now, Chris, I won't have anything to say 
to you, if this is the way you are going to 
talk," said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous 
gleam darted into her eyes. " Really, however, 
I think she carried things too far, though she is 
so good. I only said it to excuse John, and 
show how he was brought up." 



Repression. , III 

" Poor fellow ! " said I. " I know now why 
he is so hopelessly shut up, and walled up. 
Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed 
away there inside of the fortress, with the 
drawbridge down and moat all round." 

" They are all warm-hearted inside," said 
Emily. "Would you think she didn't love 
him ? Once when he was sick, she watched 
with him seventeen nights without taking off 
her clothes ; she scarcely would eat all the 
time : Jane told me so. She loves him better 
than she loves herself It 's perfectly dreadful 
sometimes to see how intense she is when any- 
thing concerns him ; it 's her principle that 
makes her so cold and quiet." 

" And a devilish one it is ! " said I. 

" Chris, you are really growing wicked ! " 

" I use the word seriously, and in good faith," 
said I. " Who but the Father of Evil ever 
devised such plans for making goodness hate- 
ful, and keeping the most heavenly part of our 
nature so under lock and key that for the 



1 1 2 Little Foxes. 

greater part of our lives we get no use of it ? 
Of what benefit is a mine of love burning where 
it warms nobody, does nothing but blister the 
soul within with its imprisoned heat ? Love re- 
pressed grows morbid, acts in a thousand per- 
verse ways. These three women, I '11 venture 
to say, are living in the family here like three 
frozen islands, knowing as little of each other's 
inner life as if parted by eternal barriers of 
ice, — and all because a cursed principle in the 
heart of the mother has made her bring them 
up in violence to Nature." 

"Well," said Emmy, "sometimes I do pity 
Jane ; she is nearest my age, and, naturally, I 
think she was something like me, or might 
have been. The other day I remember her 
coming in looking so flushed and ill that I 
could n't help asking if she were unwell. The 
tears came into her eyes ; but her mother 
looked up, in her cool, business-like way, and 
said, in her dry voice, — 

" ' Jane, what 's the matter ? * 



Repression. 113 

"*0, my head aches dreadfully, and I have 
pains in all my limbs ! ' 

" I wanted to jump and run to do something 
for her, — you know at our house we feel that 
a sick person must be waited on, — but her 
mother only said, in the same dry way, — 

" ^ Well, Jane, you 've probably got a cold ; 
go into the kitchen and make yourself some 
good boneset tea, soak your feet in hot water, 
and go to bed at once ' ; and Jane meekly de- 
parted. 

" I wanted to spring and do these things for 
her ; but it 's curious, in this house I never 
dare offer to do anything ; and mother looked 
at me, as she went out, with a significant 
nod, — 

" ' That 's always my way ; if any of the chil- 
dren are sick, I never coddle them ; it 's best 
to teach them to make as light of it as pos- 
sible/ " 

"Dreadful!" said I. 

"Yes, it is dreadful," said Emmy, drawing 



1 14 Little Foxes. 

her breath, as if reHeved that she might speak 
her mind ; " it 's dreadful to see these people, 
who I know love each other, living side by 
side and never saying a loving, tender word, 
never doing a little loving thing, — sick ones 
crawling off alone like sick animals, persisting 
in being alone, bearing everything alone. But 
I won't let them ; I will insist on forcing my 
way into their rooms. I would go and sit with 
Jane, and pet her and hold her hand and 
bathe her head, though I knew it made her 
horridly uncomfortable at first ; but I thought 
she ought to learn to be petted in a Christian 
way, when she was sick. I will kiss her too, 
sometimes, though she takes it just like a cat 
that is n't used to being stroked, and calls me 
a silly girl ; but I know she is getting to like 
it. What is the use of people's loving each 
other in this horridly cold, stingy, silent way } 
If one of them were dangerously ill now, or 
met with any serious accident, I know there 
would be no end to what the others would do 



Repression. 115 

for her ; if one of them were to die, the others 
would be perfectly crushed : but it would all 
go inward, — drop silently down into that dark, 
cold, frozen well ; they could n't speak to each 
other ; they could n't comfort each other ; they 
have lost the power of expression ; they abso- 
lutely caiHtr 

" Yes," said I, " they are like the fakirs who 
have held up an arm till it has become stiffened, 
— they cannot now change its position; like 
the poor mutes, who, being deaf, have become 
dumb through disuse of the organs of speech. 
Their education has been like those iron suits 
of armor into which little boys were put in the 
Middle Ages, solid, inflexible, put on in child- 
hood, enlarged with every year's growth, till the 
warm human frame fitted the mould as if it 
had been melted and poured into it. A per- 
son educated in this way is hopelessly crippled, 
never will be what he might have been." 

" O, don't say that, Chris ; think of John ; 
think how good he is." 



Ii6 Little Foxes. 

" I do think how good he is," — with indig- 
nation, — " and how few know it, too. I think; 
that, with the tenderest, truest, gentlest heart, 
the utmost appreciation of human friendship, 
he has passed in the world for a cold, proud, 
selfish man. If your frank, impulsive, incisive 
nature had not unlocked gates and opened 
doors, he would never have known the love of 
woman : and now he is but half disenchanted ; 
he every day tends to go back to stone." 

" But I shan't let him ; O, indeed, I know 
the danger ! I shall bring him out. I shall 
work on them all. I know they are beginning 
to love me a good deal : in the first place, be- 
cause I belong to John, and everything be- 
longing to him is perfect ; and in the second 
place — " 

"In the second place, because they expect 
to weave, day after day, the fine cobweb lines 
of their cold system of repression around you, 
which will harden and harden, and tighten and 
tighten, till you are as stiff and shrouded as 



Repression. iiy 

any of them. You remind me of our poor 
little duck : don't you remember him ? " 

" Yes, poor fellow ! how he would stay out, 
and swim round and round, while the pond 
kept freezing and freezing, and his swimming- 
place grew smaller and smaller every day ; but 
he was such a plucky little fellow that — " 

"That at last we found him one morning 
frozen tight in, and he has limped ever since 
on his poor feet." 

" O, but I won't freeze in," she said, laugh- 
ing. 

" Take care, Emmy ! You are sensitive, ap- 
probative, delicately organized ; your whole na- 
ture inclines you to give way and yield to the 
nature of those around you. One little lone 
duck such as you, however warm-blooded, light- 
hearted, cannot keep a whole pond from freez- 
ing. While you have any influence, you must 
use it all to get John away from these sur- 
roundings, where you can have him to your- 
self." 



Ii8 Little Foxes, 

" O, you know we are building our house ; 
we shall go to housekeeping soon." 

" Where ? Close by, under the very guns of 
this fortress, where all your housekeeping, all 
your little management, will be subject to daily 
inspection." 

"But mamma never interferes, never advis- 
es, — unless I ask advice." 

" No, but she influences ; she lives, she looks, 
she is there ; and while she is there, and while 
your home is within a stone's throw, the old 
spell will be on your husband, on your chil- 
dren, if you have any ; you will feel it in the 
air ; it will constrain, it will sway you, it will 
rule your house, it will bring up your children." 

O no ! never ! never ! I never could ! I 
never will ! If God should give me a dear 
little child, I will not let it grow up in these 
hateful ways ! " 

"Then, Emmy, there will be a constant, still, 
undefined, but real friction of your life-power, 
from the silent grating of your wishes and feel- 



Repression. 119 

iiigs on the cold, positive millstone of their 
opinion ; it will be a life -battle with a quiet, 
invisible, pervading spirit, who will never show 
himself in fair fight, but who will be around 
you in the very air you breathe, at your pil- 
low when you lie down and when you rise. 
There is so much in these friends of yours 
noble, wise, severely good, — their aims are so 
high, their efficiency so great, their virtues so 
many, — that they will act upon you with the 
force of a conscience, subduing, drawing, insen- 
sibly constraining you into their moulds. They 
have stronger wills, stronger natures than 
yours ; and between the two forces of your 
own nature and theirs you will be always 
oscillating, so that you will never show what 
you can do, working either in your own way 
or yet in theirs : your life will be a failure." 
" O Chris, why do you discourage me } " 
" I am trying tonic treatment, Emily ; I am 
showing you a real danger; I am rousing you 
to flee from it. John is making money fast; 



120 Little Foxes, 

there is no reason why he should always re- 
main buried in this town. Use your influence 
as they do, — daily, hourly, constantly, — to 
predispose him to take you to another sphere. 
Do not always shrink and yield ; do not con- 
ceal and assimilate and endeavor to persuade 
him and yourself that you are happy ; do not 
put the very best face to him on it all ; do not 
tolerate his relapses daily and hourly into his 
habitual, cold, inexpressive manner ; and don't 
lay aside your own little impulsive, outspoken 
ways. Respect your own nature, and assert 
it ; woo him, argue with him ; use all a wo- 
man's weapons to keep him from falling back 
into the old Castle Doubting where he lived 
till you let him out. Dispute your mother's 
hateful dogma, that love is to be taken for 
granted without daily proof between lovers ; 
cry down latent caloric in the market ; insist 
that the mere fact of being a wife is not 
enough, — that the words spoken once, years 
ago, are not enough, — that love needs new 



Repression. I2I 

leaves every summer of life, as much as youi 
elm-trees, and new branches to grow broader 
and wider, and new flowers at the root to 
cover the ground." 

" O, but I have heard that there is no surer 
way to lose love than to be exacting, and that 
it never comes for a woman's reproaches." 

"All true as Gospel, Emmy. I am not 
speaking of reproaches, or of unreasonable 
self-assertion, or of ill-temper, — you could not 
use any of these forces, if you would, you poor 
little chick! I am speaking now of the high- 
est duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the 
most sacred, — that of keeping their own noble- 
ness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. Thought- 
less, instinctive, unreasoning love and self-sac- 
rifice, such as many women long to bestow on 
husband and children, soil and lower the very 
objects of their love. Yoii may grow saintly 
by self-sacrifice ; but do your husband and chil- 
dren grow saintly by accepting it without re- 
turn .? I have seen a verse which says, — 
6 



122 Little Foxes. '.' 

* They who kneel at woman's shrme 
Breathe on it as they bow.' 

Is not this true of all unreasoning love and 
self-devotion ? If we let our friend become 
cold and selfish and exacting without a remon- 
strance, we are no true lover, no true friend. 
Any good man soon learns to discriminate be- 
tween the remonstrance that comes from a wo- 
man's love to his soul, her concern for his 
honor, her anxiety for his moral development, 
and the pettish cry which comes from her own 
personal wants. It will be your own fault, if, 
for lack of anything you can do, your husband 
relapses into these cold, undemonstrative hab- 
its which have robbed his life of so much 
beauty and enjoyment. These dead, barren 
ways of living are as unchristian as they are 
disagreeable ; and you, as a good little Chris- 
tian sworn to fight heroically under Christ's 
banner, must make headway against this sort 
of family Antichrist, though it comes with a 
show of superior sanctity and self-sacrifice. 



Repnssion. 123 

Remember, dear, that the Master's family had 
its outward tokens of love as well as its in- 
ward life. The beloved leaned on His bosom ; 
and the traitor could not have had a sign for 
his- treachery, had there not been a daily kiss 
at meeting and parting with His children." 

" I am glad you have said all this," said Em- 
ily, "because now I feel stronger for it. It 
does not now seem so selfish for me to want 
what it is better for John to give. Yes, I must 
seek what will be best for him." 

And so the little one, put on the track of 
self-sacrifice, began to see her way clearer, as 
many little women of her sort do. Make them 
look on self-assertion as one form of martyr- 
dom, and they will come into it. 

But, for all my eloquence on this evening, 
the house was built in the selfsame spot as 
projected ; and the family life went on, under 
the shadow of Judge Evans's elms, much as if 
I had not spoken. Emmy became mother of 
two fine, lovely boys, and waxed dimmer and 



124 Little Foxes. 

fainter ; while with her physical decay came 
increasing need of the rule in the household 
of mamma and sisters, who took her up ener- 
getically on eagles' wings, and kept her house, 
and managed her children : for what can be 
done when a woman hovers half her time be- 
tween life and death ? 

At last I spoke out to John, that the climate 
and atmosphere were too severe for her who 
had become so dear to him, — to them all ; and 
then they consented that the change much 
talked of and urged, but always opposed by 
the parents, should be made. 

John bought a pretty cottage in our neigh- 
borhood, and brought his wife and boys ; and 
the effect of change of moral atmosphere veri- 
fied all my predictions. In a year we had our 
own blooming, joyous, impulsive little Emily 
once more, — full of life, full of cheer, full of 
energy, — looking to the ways of her house- 
hold, — the merry companion of her growing 
boys, — the blithe empress over her husband, 



Repression. 125 

who took to her genial sway as in the old 
happy days of courtship. The nightmare was 
past, and John was as joyous as any of us in 
his freedom. As Emmy said, he was turned 
right side out for life ; and we all admired the 
pattern. And that is the end of my story. 

And now for the moral, — and that is, that 
life consists of two parts, — Expression and Re- 
pression, — each of which has its solemn du- 
ties. To love, joy, hope, faith, pity, belongs 
the duty of expression : to anger, envy, malice, 
revenge, and all uncharitableness, belongs the 
duty of repression. 

Some very religious and moral people err 
by applying* repression to both classes alike. 
They repress equally the expression of love 
and of hatred, of pity and of anger. Such 
forget one great law, as true in the moral 
world as in the physical, — that repression les- 
sens and deadens. Twice or thrice mowing 
will kill off the sturdiest crop of weeds ; the 
roots die for want of expression. A compress 



126 Little Foxes. 

on a limb will stop its growing ; the surgeon 
knows this, and puts a tight bandage around 
a tumor ; but what if we put a tight bandage 
about the heart and lungs, as some young 
ladies of my acquaintance do, — or bandage 
the feet, as they do in China? And what if 
we bandage a nobler inner faculty, and wrap 
love in grave-clothes ? 

But again there are others, and their num- 
ber is legion, — perhaps you and I, reader, may 
know something of it in ourselves, — who have 
an instinctive habit of repression in regard to 
all that is noblest and highest within them, 
which they do not feel in their lower and 
more unworthy nature. 

It comes far easier to scold our friend in an 
angry moment than to say how much we love, 
honor, and esteem him in a kindly mood. 
Wrath and bitterness speak themselves and go 
with their own force ; love is shame-faced, looks 
shyly out of the window, lingers long at the 
d<^or-latch. 



Repression. 127 

How much freer utterance among many good 
Christians have anger, contempt, and censori- 
ousness, than tenderness and love ! / hate is 
said loud and with all our force. / love is said 
with a hesitating voice and blushing cheek. 

In an angry mood we do an injury to a 
loving heart with good, strong, free emphasis ; 
but we stammer and hang back when our 
diviner nature tells us to confess and ask par- 
don. Even when our heart is broken with 
repentance, we haggle and linger long before 
we can 

" Throw away the worser part of it" 

How many live a stingy and niggardly life 
in regard to their richest inward treasures ! 
They live with those they love dearly, whom 
a few more words and deeds expressive of this 
love would make so much happier, richer, and 
better ; and they cannot, will not, turn the key 
and give it out. People who in their very 
souls really do love, esteem, reverence, almost 
worship each other, live a barren, chilly life 



128 Little Foxes. 

side by side, busy, anxious, preoccupied, letting 
their love go by as a matter of course, a last 
year's growth, with no present buds and blos- 
soms. 

Are there not sons and daughters who have 
parents living with them as angels unawares, — 
husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, in 
whom the material for a beautiful life lies 
locked away in unfruitful silence, — who give 
time to everything but the cultivation and ex- 
pression of mutual love ? 

The time is coming, they think, in some far 

future, when they shall find leisure to enjoy 
each other, to stop and rest side by side, to 
discover to each other these hidden treasures 
which lie idle and unused. 

Alas ! time flies and death steals on, and 
we reiterate the complaint of one in Scrip- 
ture, — "It came to pass, while thy servant 
was busy hither and thither, the man was 
gone." 

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for 



Repression. 129 

words left unsaid and deeds left undone. " She 
never knew how I loved her." " He never 
knew what he was to me." "I always meant 
to make more of our friendship." "I did not 
know what he was to me till he was gone." 
Such words are the poisoned arrows which 
cruel Death shoots backward at us from the 
door of the sepulchre. 

How much more we might make of our fam- 
ily life, of our friendships, if every secret 
thought of love blossomed into a deed ! We 
are not now speaking merely of personal ca- 
resses. These may or may not be the best 
language of affection. Many are endowed with 
a delicacy, a fastidiousness of physical organi- 
zation, which shrinks away from too much of 
these, repelled and overpowered. But there 
are words and looks and little observances, 
thoughtfulnesses, watchful little attentions, which 
speak of love, which make it manifest, and there 
is scarce a family that might not be richer in 
heart-wealth for more of them. 

6* I 



130 Little Foxes. 

It is a mistake to suppose that relations 
must of course love each other because they 
are relations. Love must be cultivated, and 
can be increased by judicious culture, as wild 
fruits may double their bearing under the hand 
of a gardener ; and love can dwindle and die 
out by neglect, as choice flower-seeds planted 
in poor soil dwindle and grow single. 

Two causes in our Anglo-Saxon nature pre- 
vent this easy faculty and flow of expression 
which strike one so pleasantly in the Italian 
or the French life : the dread of flattery, and 
a constitutional shyness. 

"I perfectly longed to tell So-and-so how I 
admired her, the other day," says Miss X. 

" And why in the world did n't you tell 
her.?" 

"O, it would seem Hke flattery, you know." 

Now what is flattery 1 

Flattery is insincere praise given from inter- 
ested motives, not the sincere utterance to a 
friend of what we deem good and lovely in 



Repression. 131 

And so, for fear of flattering, these dread- 
fully sincere people go on side by side with 
those they love and admire, giving them all 
the time the impression of utter indifference. 
Parents are so afraid of exciting pride and 
vanity in their children by the expression of 
their love and approbation, that a child some- 
times goes sad and discouraged by their side, 
and learns with surprise, in some chance way, 
that they are proud and fond of him. There 
are times when the open expression of a fa- 
ther's love would be worth more than church 
or sermon to a boy ; and his father cannot 
utter it, will not show it. 

The other thing that represses the utterances 
of love is the characteristic shyness of the An- 
glo-Saxon blood. Oddly enough, a race born 
of two demonstrative, out-spoken, nations — 
the German and the French — has an habit- 
ual reserve that is like neither. There is a 
powerlessness of utterance in our blood that 
we should fight against, and struggle outward 



132 Little Foxes. 

towards expression. We can educate ourselves 
to it, if we know and feel the necessity ; we 
can make it a Christian duty, not only to love, 
but to be loving, — not only to be true friends, 
but to shozv ourselves friendly. We can make 
ourselves say the kind things that rise in our 
hearts and tremble back on our lips, — do the 
gentle and helpful deeds which we long to do 
and shrink back from ; and, little by little, it 
will grow easier, — the love spoken will bring 
back the answer of love, — the kind deed will 
bring back a kind deed in return, — till the 
hearts in the family-circle, instead of being so 
many frozen, icy islands, shall be full of warm 
airs and echoing bird-voices answering back 
and forth with a constant melody of love. 



IV. 

PERSISTENCE. 

TV /r Y little foxes are interesting little beasts ; 
and I only hope my reader will not get 
tired of my charming menagerie before I have 
done showing him their nice points. He must 
recollect there are seven of them, and as yet 
v/e have shown up only three ; so let him have 
patience. 

As before stated, little foxes are the little pet 
sins of us educated good Christians, who hope 
that we are above and far out of sight of steal- 
ing, lying, and those other gross evils against 
which we pray every Sunday, when the Ten 
Commandments are read. They are not gen- 
erally considered of dignity enough to be fired 
at from the pulpit ; they seem to us too trifling 
to be remembered in church ; they are like the 
red spiders on plants, — too small for the per- 



134 ^ ^^^^^ Foxes. 

ception of the naked eye, and only to be known 
by the shrivelling and dropping of leaf after 
leaf that ought to be green and flourishing. 

I have another little fox in my eye, who is 
most active and most mischievous in despoil- 
ing the vines of domestic happiness, — in fact, 
who has been guilty of destroying more grapes 
than anybody knows of His name I find it 
difficult to give with exactness. In my enume- 
ration I called him Self -Will ; another name 
for him — perhaps a better one — might be 
Persistence. 

Like many another, this fault is the over- 
action of a most necessary and praiseworthy 
quality. The power of firmness is given to 
man as the very granite foundation of life. 
Without it, there would be nothing accom- 
plished ; all human plans would be unstable as 
water on an inclined plane. In every well- 
constituted nature there must be a power of 
tenacity, a gift of perseverance of will ; and 
that man might not be without a foundation 



Persistence. 135 

for so needful a property, the Creator has laid 
it in an animal faculty, which he possesses in 
common with the brutes. 

The animal power of firmness is a brute 
force, a matter of brain and spinal cord, differ- 
ing in different animals. The force by which 
a bulldog holds on to an antagonist, the per- 
sistence with which a mule will plant his four 
feet and set himself against blows and menaces, 
are good examples of the pure animal phase of 
a property which exists in human beings, and 
forms the foundation for that heroic endurance, 
for that perseverance, which carries on all the 
great and noble enterprises of life. 

The domestic fault we speak of is the wild, 
uncultured growth of this faculty, the instinctive 
action of firmness uncontrolled by reason or 
conscience, — in common parlance, the being 
" set in ones way." It is the animal instinct of 
being " set in one's way " which we mean by 
self-will or persistence ; and in domestic life it 
does the more mischief from its working as an 



1 36 Little Foxes. 

instinct unwatched by reason and unchallenged 
by conscience. 

In that pretty new cottage which you see 
on yonder knoll are a pair of young people just 
in the midst of that happy bustle which attends 
the formation of a first home in prosperous cir- 
cumstances, and with all the means of making 
it charming and agreeable. Carpenters, uphol- 
sterers, and artificers await their will ; and there 
remains for them only the pleasant task of ar- 
ranging and determining where all their pretty 
and agreeable things shall be placed. Our 
Hero and Leander are decidedly nice people, 
who have been through all the proper stages 
of being in love with each other for the requi- 
site and suitable time. They have written each 
other a letter every day for two years, begin- 
ning with "My dearest," and ending with 
" Your own," etc. ; they have sent each other 
flowers and rings and locks of hair ; they have 
worn each other's pictures on their hearts ; 
they have spent hours and hours talking over 



Persistence. 137 

all subjects under the sun, and are convinced 
that never was there such sympathy of souls, 
such unanimity of opinion, such a just, reason- 
able, perfect foundation for mutual esteem. 

Now it is quite true that people may have 
a perfect agreement and sympathy in their 
higher intellectual nature, — may like the same 
books, quote the same poetry, agree in the 
same principles, be united in the same religion, 
— and nevertheless, when they come together 
in the simplest affair of every-day business, may 
find themselves jarring and impinging upon 
each other at every step, simply because there 
are to each person, in respect of daily personal 
habits and personal likes and dislikes, a thou- 
sand little individualities with which reason has 
nothing to do, which are not subjects for the 
use of logic, and to which they never think of 
applying the power of religion, — which can 
only be set down as the positive ultimate facts 
of existence with two people. 

Suppose a blue-jay courts and wins and weds 



138 Little Foxes. 

a Baltimore oriole. During courtship there may 
have been delightful sympathetic conversation 
on the charm of being free birds, the felicity 
of soaring in the blue summer air. Mr. Jay 
may have been all humility and all ecstasy in 
comparing the discordant screech of his own 
note with the warbling tenderness of Miss 
Oriole. But, once united, the two commence 
business relations. He is firmly convinced that 
a nest built among the reeds of a marsh is the 
only reasonable nest for a bird ; she is positive 
that she should die there in a month of damp 
and rheumatism. She never heard of going to 
housekeeping in anything but a nice little pen- 
dulous bag swinging down from under the 
branches of a breezy elm ; he is sure he should 
have water on the brain before summer was 
over, from constant vertigo, in such swaying, 
unsteady quarters, — he would be a sea-sick 
blue-jay on land, and he cannot think of it. 
She knows now he don't love her, or he never 
would think of shutting her up in an old mouldy 



Persistence. 139 

nest where she is sure she shall have the chills ; 
and he knows she does n't love him, or she 
never would want to make him uncomfortable 
all his days by tilting and swinging him about 
as no decent bird ought to be swung. Both 
are dead-set in their own way and opinion ; and 
how is either to be convinced that the way 
which seemeth right unto the other is not best ? 
Nature knows this, and therefore, in her feath- 
ered tribes, blue-jays do not mate with orioles ; 
and so bird-housekeeping goes on in peace. 

But men and women as diverse in their 
physical tastes and habits as blue-jays and ori- 
oles are wooing and wedding every day, and 
coming to the business of nest-building, alias 
housekeeping, with predilections as violent, and 
as incapable of any logical defence, as the ori- 
ole's partiality for a swing-nest and the jay's 
preference of a nest among the reeds. 

Our Hero and Leander, there, who are ar- 
ranging their cottage to-day, are examples just 
in point. They have both of them been only 



140 Little Foxes. 

children, — both the idols of circles where they 
have been universally deferred to. Each in his 
or her own circle has been looked up to as a 
model of good taste, and of course each has the 
habit of exercising and indulging very distinct 
personal tastes. They truly, deeply esteem, re- 
spect, and love each other, and for the very 
best of reasons, — because there are sympathies 
of the very highest kind between them. Both 
are generous and affectionate, — both are highly 
cultured in intellect and taste, — both are ear- 
nestly religious ; and yet, with all this, let me 
tell you that the first year of their married life 
will be worthy to be recorded as a year of bat- 
tles. Yes, these friends so true, these lovers so 
ardent, these individuals in themselves so ad- 
mirable, cannot come into the intimate relations 
of life without an effervescence as great as that 
of an acid and alkali ; and it will be impossi- 
ble to decide which is mosi^ ;n fault, the acid 
or the alkali, both being ir- cwi^ way of the 
very best quality. 



Persistence. 141 

The reason of it all is, that both are intensely 
^* set in their way I' and the ways of no two hu- 
man beings are altogether coincident. Both of 
them have the most sharply defined, exact 
tastes and preferences. In the simplest matter 
both have a way, — an exact way, — which 
seems to be dear to them as life's blood. In 
the simplest appetite or taste they know ex- 
actly what they want, and cannot, by any argu- 
ment, persuasion, or coaxing, be made to want 
anything else. 

For example, this morning dawns bright upon 
them, as she, in her tidy morning wrapper and 
trimly laced boots, comes stepping over the 
bales and boxes which are discharged on the 
verandah ; while he, for joy of his new acqui- 
sition, can hardly let her walk' on her own 
pretty feet, and is making every fond excuse 
to lift her over obstacles and carry her into 
her new dwelling in triumph. 

Carpets are put down, the floors glow under 
the hands of obedient workmen, and now the 
furniture is being wheeled in. 



142 Little Foxes. 

" Put the piano in the bow-window," says the 
lady. 

" No, not in the bow-window," says the gen- 
tleman. 

"Why, my dear, of course it must go in the 
bow-window. How awkward it would look 
anywhere else ! I have always seen pianos in 
bow-windows." 

" My love, certainly you would not think of 
spoiling that beautiful prospect from the bow- 
window by blocking it up with the piano. The 
proper place is just here, in the corner of the 
room. Now try it." 

" My dear, I think it looks dreadfully there ; 
it spoils the appearance of the room." 

" Well, for my part, my love, I think the ap- 
pearance of the room would be spoiled, if you 
filled up the bow-window. Think v/hat a love- 
ly place that would be to sit in ! " 

" Just as if we could n't sit there behind the 
piano, if we wanted to ! " says the lady. 

" But then, how much more ample and airy 



Persistence. 143 

the room looks as you open the door, and see 
through the bow-window down that Httle glen, 
and that distant peep of the village-spire ! " 

" But I never could be reconciled to the 
piano standing in the corner in that way," says 
the lady. "/ insist upon it, it ought to stand 
in the bow-window : it 's the way mamma's 
stands, and Aunt Jane's, and Mrs. Wilcox's ; 
everybody has their piano so." 

" If it comes to insistingl' says the gentle- 
man, " it strikes me that is a game two can 
play at." 

"Why, my dear, you know a lady's parlor 
is her own ground." 

" Not a married lady's parlor, I imagine. I 
believe it is at least equally her husband's, as 
he expects to pass a good portion of his time 
there." 

" But I don't think you ought to insist on an 
arrangement that really is disagreeable to me," 
says the lady. 

"And I don't think you ought to insist on 



144 Little Foxes. 

an arrangement that is really disagreeable to 
me," says the gentleman. 

And now Hero's cheeks flush, and the spirit 
burns within, as she says, — 

"Well, if you insist upon it T suppose it 
must be as you say ; but I shall never take 
any pleasure in playing on it " ; and Hero 
sweeps from the apartment, leaving the victor 
very unhappy in his conquest. 

He rushes after her, and finds her up-stairs, 
sitting disconsolate and weeping on a packing- 
box. 

" Now, Hero, how silly ! Do have it your 
own way. I '11 give it up." 

" No, — let it be as you say. I forgot that 
it was a wife's duty to submit." 

" Nonsense, Hero ! Do talk like a rational 
woman. Don't let us quarrel like children." 

" But it 's so evident that I was in the 
right." 

" My dear, I cannot concede that you were 
in the right ; but I am willing it should be as 
you say." 



Persistence. 145 

" Now I perfectly wonder, Leander, that you 
don't see how awkward your way is. It would 
make me nervous every time I came into the 
room, and it would be so dark in that corner 
that I never could see the notes." 

" And I wonder. Hero, that a woman of your 
taste don't see how shutting up that bow-win- 
dow spoils the parlor. It 's the very prettiest 
feature of the room." 

And so round and round they go, stating and 
restating their arguments, both getting more 
and more nervous and combative, both declar- 
ing themselves perfectly ready to yield the 
point as an oppressive exaction, but to do 
battle for their own opinion as right and rea- 
son, — the animal instinct of self-will meanwhile 
rising and rising and growing stronger and 
stronger on both sides. But meanwhile in the 
heat of argument some side-issues and personal 
reflections fly out Hke splinters in the shivering 
of lances. He tells her, in his heat, -that her 
notions are formed from deference to models 
7 J 



146 Little Foxes. 

in fashionable life, and that she has no idea 
of adaptation, — and she tells him that he is 
domineering, and dictatorial, and wanting to 
have everything his own way; and in fine, this 
battle is fought off and on through the day, 
with occasional armistices of kisses and mak- 
ings-up, — treacherous truces, which are all 
broken up by the fatal words, " My dear, after 
all, you must admit / was in the right," which 
of course is the signal to fight the whole battle 
over again. 

One such prolonged struggle is the parent 
of many lesser ones, — the aforenamed splinters 
of injurious remark and accusation, which flew 
out in the heat of argument, remaining and fes- 
tering and giving rise to nervous soreness ; yet, 
where there is at the foundation real, genuine 
love, and a good deal of it, the pleasure of 
making up so balances the pain of the contro- 
versy that the two do not perceive exactly what 
they are domg, nor suspect that so deep and 
wide a love as theirs can be seriously affected 
by causes so insignificant. 



Persistence. 147 

But the cause of difficulty in both, the silent, 
un watched, intense power of self-will in trifles, 
is all the while precipitating them into new 
encounters. For example,, in a bright hour be- 
tween the showers, Hero arranges for her Lean- 
der a repast of peace and good-will, and com- 
pounds for him a salad which is a chef d'oenvre 
among salads. Leander is also bright and pro- 
pitious ; but after tasting the salad, he pushes 
it silently away. 

"My dear, you don't like your salad." 

" No, my dear ; I never eat anything with 
salad oil in it." 

" Not eat salad oil ! How absurd ! I never 
heard of a salad without oil." And the lady 
looks disturbed. 

" But, my dear, as I tell you, I never take 
it. I prefer simple sugar and vinegar." 

" Sugar and vinegar ! Why, Leander, I 'm 
astonished ! How very bourgeois ! You must 
really try to like my salad " — (spoken in a 
coaxing tone) 



148 Little Foxes. 

" My dear, I never try to like anything new. 
I am satisfied with my old tastes." 

" Well, Leander, I must say that is very un 
gracious and disobliging of you." 

" Why any more than for you to annoy me 
by forcing on me what I don't like t " 

" But you would like it, if you would only 
try. People never like olives till they have 
eaten three or four, and then they become pas- 
sionately fond of them." 

" Then I think they are very silly to go 
through all that trouble, when there are enough 
things, that they do like." 

" Now, Leander, I don't think that seems 
amiable or pleasant at all. I think we ought 
to try to accommodate ourselves to the tastes 
of our friends." 

" Then, my dear, suppose you try to like your 
salad with sugar and vinegar." 

" But it 's so gauche and unfashionable ! Did 
you ever hear of a salad made with sugar and 
vinegar on a table in good society 1 " 



Persistence. 149 

" My mother's table, I believe, was good so- 
ciety, and I learned to like it there. The truth 
is, Hero, for a sensible woman, you are too 
fond of mere fashionable and society notions." 

" Yes, you told me that last week, and I 
think it was very unjust, — very unjust, indeed^^ 
— (uttered with emphasis). 

"No more unjust than your telling me that 
I was dictatorial and obstinate." 

" Well, now, Leander, dear, you must confess 
that you are rather obstinate." 

" I don't see the proof" 

"You insist on your own ways and opinions 
so, heaven and earth won't turn you." 

" Do I insist on mine more than you on 
yours t " 

"Certainly, you do." 

"1 don't think so." 

Hero casts up her eyes and repeats with 
expression, — 



" O, wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursels as others see us I " 



150 L title Foxes, 

" Precisely," says Leander. " I would that 
prayer were answered in your case, my dear." 

" I think you take pleasure in provoking 
me," says the lady. 

" My dear, how silly and childish all this is ! " 
says the gentleman. "Why can't we let each 
other alone .-* " 

" You began it." 

" No, my dear, begging your pardon, I did 
not." 

" Certainly, Leander, you did." 

Now a conversation of this kind may go on 
hour after hour, as long as the respective par- 
ties have breath and strength, both becoming 
secretly more and more "set in their way." 
On both sides is the consciousness that they 
might end it at once by a very simple conces- 
sion. 

She might say, — " Well, dear, you shall al- 
ways have your salad as you like " ; and he 
might say, — " My dear, I will try to like your 
wilad, if you care much about it " ; and if either 



Persistence. 151 

of them would utter one of these sentences, the 
other would soon follow. Either would give 
up, if the other would set the example ; but as 
it is, they remind us of nothing so much as two 
cows that we have seen standing with locked 
horns in a meadow, who can neither advance 
nor recede an inch. It is a mere deadlock of 
the animal instinct of firmness ; reason, con- 
science, religion, have nothing to do with it. 

The questions debated in this style by our 
young couple were surprisingly numerous ; as, 
for example, whether their favorite copy of 
Turner should hang in the parlor or in the 
library, — whether their pet little landscape 
should hang against the wall, or be placed on 
an easel, — whether the bust of the Venus de 
Milos should stand on the marble table in the 
hall, or on a bracket in the library ; all of 
which points were debated with a breadth of 
survey, a richness of imagery, a vigor of dis- 
cussion, that would be perfectly astonishing to 
any one who did not know how much two very 



152 Little Foxes. 

self-willed argumentative people might find to 
say on any point under heaven. Everything 
in classical antiquity, — everything in Kugler's 
"Hand-Book of Painting," — every opinion of 
living artists, — besides questions social, moral, 
and religious, — all mingled in the grand melee : 
because there is nothing in creation that is not 
somehow connected with everything else. 

Dr. Johnson has said, — "There are a thou- 
sand familiar disputes which reason never can 
decide ; questions that elude investigation, and 
make logic ridiculous ; cases where something 
must be done, and where little can be said." 

With all deference to the great moralist, we 
must say that this statement argues a very 
limited knowledge of the resources of talk pos- 
sessed by two very cultivated and very self- 
willed persons fairly pitted against each other 
in practical questions ; the logic may indeed 
be ridiculous, but such people as our Hero 
and Leander find no cases under the sun where 
something is to be done, yet where httle can be 



Persistence. 153 

said. And these wretched wranglings, this in- 
terminable labyrinth of petty disputes, waste 
and crumble away that high ideal of truth and 
tenderness, which the real, deep sympathies 
and actual worth of their characters entitled 
them to form. Their married life is not what 
they expected ; at times they are startled by 
the reflection that they have somehow grown 
unlovely to each other ; and yet, if Leander 
goes away to pass a week, and thinks of his 
Hero in the distance, he can compare no other 
woman to her; and the days seem long and 
the house empty to Hero while he is gone ; 
both wonder at themselves when they look over 
their petty bickerings, but neither knows ex- 
actly how to catch the little fox that spoils 
their vines. 

It is astonishing how much we think about 
ourselves, yet to how little purpose, — how very 
clever people will talk and wonder about them- 
selves and each other, and yet go on year after 
year, not knowing how to use either themselves 
7* 



154 Little Foxes. 

or each other, — not having as much practical 
philosophy in the matter of their own charac- 
ters and that of their friends as they have in 
respect of the screws of their gas-fixtures or 
the management of their water-pipes. 

" But / won't have any such scenes with my 
wife," says Don Positivo. "I won't marry one 
of your clever women ; they are always posi- 
tive and disagreeable. / look for a wife of a 
gentle and yielding nature, that shall take her 
opinions from me, and accommodate her tastes 
to mine." And so Don Positivo goes and mar- 
ries a pretty little pink-and-white concern, so 
lisping and soft and delicate that he is quite 
sure she cannot have a will of her own. She 
is the moon of his heavens, to shine only by 
his reflected light. 

We would advise our gentlemen friends who 
wish to enjoy the felicity of having their own 
way not to try the experiment with a pretty 
fool ; for the obstinacy of cleverness and reason 
is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and in- 
anity. 



Persistence. 155 

Let our friend once get in the seat opposite 
to him at table a pretty creature who cries for 
the moon, and insists that he don't love her 
because he does n't get it for her ; and in vain 
may he display his superior knowledge of as- 
tronomy, and prove to her that the moon is 
not to be got. She listens with her head on 
one side, and after he has talked himself quite 
out of breath, repeats the very same sentence 
she began the discussion with, without varia- 
tion or addition. > 

If she wants darling Johnny taken away from 
school, because cruel teachers will not give up 
the rules of the institution for his pleasure, in 
vain does Don Positive, in the most select and 
superior English, enlighten her on the neces- 
sity of habits of self-control and order for a 
boy, — the impossibility that a teacher should 
make exceptions for their particular darling,— 
the absolute, perishing need that the boy should 
begin to do something. She hears him all 
through, and then says, " I don't know anything 



156 Little Foxes. 

about that. I know what I want ; I want 
Johnny taken away." And so she weeps, sulks, 
storms, entreats, lies awake nights, has long fits 
of sick-headache, — in short, shows that a pretty 
animal, without reason or cultivation, can be, 
in her way, quite as formidable an antagonist 
as the most clever of her sex. 

Leander can sometimes vanquish his Hero 
in fair fight by the weapons of good logic, 
because she is a woman capable of appreciat- 
ing reason, and able to feel the force of the 
considerations he adduces ; and when he does 
vanquish and carry her captive by his bow 
and spear, he feels that he has gained a vic- 
tory over no ignoble antagonist, and he be- 
comes a hero in his own eyes. Though a wo- 
man of much will, still she is a woman of much 
reason ; and if he has many vexations with her 
pertinacity, he is never without hope in her 
good sense ; but alas for him whose wife has 
only the animal instinct of firmness, without 
any development of the judgment or reasoning 



Persistence. 157 

faculties ! The conflicts with a woman whom 
a man respects and admires are often extremely 
trying ; but the conflicts with one whom he 
cannot help despising, become in the end sim- 
ply disgusting. 

But the inquiry now arises, What shall be 
done with all the questions Dr. Johnson speaks 
of, which reason cannot decide, which elude 
investigation, and make logic ridiculous, — cases 
where something must be done, and where little 
can be said '^. 

Read Mrs. Ellis's "Wives of England," and 
you have one solution of the problem. The 
good women of England are there informed 
that there is to be no discussion, that every- 
thing in the mmage is to follow the rule of the 
lord, and that the wife has but one hope, 
namely, that grace may be given him to know 
exactly what his own will is. **L'eiat, cest 
moil' is the lesson which every English hus- 
band learns of Mrs. Ellis, and we should judge 
from the pictures of English novels that this 



158 Little Foxes. 

"awful right divine" is insisted on in detail in 
domestic life. 

Miss Edgeworth makes her magnificent Gen- 
eral Clarendon talk about his "commands" to 
his accomplished and elegant wife ; and he 
rings the parlor-bell with such an air, calls up 
and interrogates trembling servants with such 
awful majesty, and lays about him generally 
in so very military and tremendous a style, 
that we are not surprised that poor little Cecilia 
is frightened into lying, being half out of her 
wits in terror of so very martial a husband. 

During his hours of courtship he majestically 
informs her mother that he never could con- 
sent to receive as his wife any woman who 
has had another attachment; and so the poor 
puss, like a naughty girl, conceals a little school- 
girl flirtation . of bygone days, and thus gives 
rise to most agonizing and tragic scenes with 
her terrible lord, who petrifies her one morn- 
ing by suddenly drawing the bed-curtains and 
flapping an old love-letter in her eyes, asking, 



Persistence. 159 

in tones of suppressed thunder, " Cecilia, is 
this your writing?" 

The more modern female novelists of Eng- 
land give us representations of their view of 
the right divine no less stringent. In a very 
popular story, called "Agatha's Husband," the 
plot is as follows. A man marries a beautiful 
girl with a large fortune. Before the marriage, 
he discovers that his brother, who has been 
guardian of the estate, has fraudulently squan- 
dered the property, so that it can only be re- 
trieved by the strictest economy. For the sake 
of getting her heroine into a situation to illus- 
trate her moral, the authoress now makes her 
hero give a solemn promise not to divulge to 
his wife or to any human being the fraud by 
which she suffers. 

The plot of the story then proceeds to show 
how very badly the young wife behaves when 
her husband takes her to mean lodgings, de- 
prives her of wonted luxuries and comforts, 
and obstinately refuses to give any kind of 



i6o Little Foxes. 

sensible reason for his conduct. Instead of 
looking up to him with blind faith and unques- 
tioning obedience, following his directions with- 
out inquiry, and believing not only without evi- 
dence, but against apparent evidence, that he 
is the soul of honor and wisdom, this perverse 
Agatha murmurs, complains, thinks herself very 
ill-used, and occasionally is even wicked enough, 
in a very mild way, to say so, — whereat her 
husband looks like a martyr and suffers in 
silence ; and thus we are treated to a volume 
of mutual distresses, which are at last ended 
by the truth coming out, the abused husband 
mounting the throne in glory, and the penitent 
wife falling in the dust at his feet, and confess- 
ing what a wretch she has been all along to 
doubt him. 

The authoress of " Jane Eyre " describes the 
process of courtship in much the same terms 
as one would describe the breaking of a horse. 
Shirley is contumacious and self-willed, and 
Moore, her lover and tutor, gives her '' Le Cheval 



Persistence. i6i 

dompte''' for a French lesson, as a gentle inti- 
mation of the work he has in hand in paying 
her his addresses ; and after long struggling 
against his power, when at last she consents to 
his love, he addresses her thus, under the figure 
of a very fierce leopardess : — 

"Tame or wild, fierce or subdued, you are 
miner 

And she responds : — 

" I am glad I know my keeper and am used 
to him. Only his voice will I follow, only his 
hand shall manage me, only at his feet will I 
repose." 

The accomplished authoress of " Nathalie " 
represents the struggles of a young girl en- 
gaged to a man far older than herself, extremely 
dark and heroic, fond of behaving in a very 
unaccountable manner, and declaring, neverthe- 
less, in awful and mysterious tones, that he has 
such a passion for being believed in, that, if 
any one of his friends, under the most su.spi- 
cious circumstances, admits 07te doubt of his 



1 62 Little Foxes. 

honor, all will be over between them for- 
ever. 

After, establishing his power over Nathalie 
fully, and amusing himself quietly for a time 
with the contemplation of her perplexities and 
anxieties, he at last unfolds to her the myste- 
rious counsels of his will by declaring to an- 
other of her lovers, in her presence, that he 
" has the intention of asking this young lady 
to become his wife," During the engagement, 
however, he contrives to disturb her tranquillity 
by insisting prematurely on the right divine 
of husbands, and, as she proves fractious, an- 
nounces to her, that, much as he loves her, he 
sees no prospect of future happiness m their 
union, and that they had better part. 

The rest of the story describes the struggles 
and anguish of the two, who pass through a 
volume of distresses, he growing more cold, 
proud, severe, and misanthropic than ever, all 
of which is supposed to be the fault of naughty 
Miss Nathalie, who might have made a saint 



Persistence. 163 

of him, could she only have found her highest 
pleasure in letting him have his own way. Her 
conscience distresses her ; it is all her fault ; at 
last, worn out in the strife, she resolves to be 
a good girl, goes to his library, finds him alone, 
and, in spite of an insulting reception, humbles 
herself at his feet, gives up all her naughty 
pride, begs to be allowed to wait on him as a 
handmaid, and is rewarded by his graciously 
announcing, that, since she will stay with him 
at all events, she may stay as his wife ; and the 
story leaves her in the last sentence sitting in 
what we are informed is the only true place 
of happiness for a woman, at her husband's 
feet. 

This is the solution which the most culti- 
vated women of England give of the domestic 
problem. 

According to these fair interpreters of Eng- 
lish ideas, the British lion on his own domestic 
hearth, standing in awful majesty with his back 
to the fire and his hands under his coat-tails, 



164 Little Foxes. 

can be supposed to have no such disreputable 
discussions as we have described ; since his 
partner, as Miss Bront6 says, has learned to 
know her keeper, and her place at his feet, and 
can conceive no happiness so great as hanging 
the picture and setting the piano exactly as he 
likes. 

Of course this will be met with a general 
shriek of horror on the part of our fair repub- 
lican friends, and an equally general disclaimer 
on the part of our American gentlemen, who, 
so far as we know, would be quite embarrassed 
by the idea of assuming any such pronounced 
position at the fireside. 

The genius of American institutions is not 
towards a display of authority. All needed au- 
thority exists among us, but exists silently, with 
as little external manifestation as possible. 

Our President is but a fellow-citizen, person- 
ally the equal of other citizens. We obey him 
because we have chosen him, and because we 
find it convenient, in regulating our affairs, 



Persistence. 165 

to have one final appeal and one deciding 
voice. 

The position in which the Bible and the mar- 
riage service place the husband in the family 
amounts to no more. He is the head of the 
family in all that relates to its material interests, 
its legal relations, its honor and standing in 
society ; and no true woman who respects her- 
self would any more hesitate to promise to 
yield to him this position and the deference 
it implies than an officer of state to yield to 
the President. But because Mr. Lincoln is of- 
ficially above Mr. Seward, it does not follow 
that there can be nothing between them but 
absolute command on the one part and prostrate 
submission on the other ; neither does it follow 
that the superior claims in all respects to regu- 
late the affairs and conduct of the inferior. 
There are still wide spheres of individual free- 
dom, as there are in the case of husband and 
wife ; and no sensible man but would feel 
himself ridiculous in entering another's proper 
sphere with the voice of authority. 



1 66* '* Little Foxes. 

The inspired declaration, that " the husband 
is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the 
head of the Church," is certainly to be quali- 
fied by the evident points of difference in the 
subjects spoken of It certainly does not mean 
that any man shall be invested with the rights 
of omnipotence and omniscience, but simply 
that in the family state he is the head and 
protector, even as in the Church is the Sav- 
iour. It is merely the announcement of a 
great natural law of society which obtains 
through all the tribes and races of men, — a' 
great and obvious fact of human existence. 

The silly and senseless reaction against this 
idea in some otherwise sensible women is, I 
think, owing to the kind of extravagances and 
overstatements to which we have alluded. It 
is as absurd to cavil at the word obey in the 
marriage ceremony as for a military officer to 
set himself against the etiquette of the army, 
or a man to refuse the freeman's oath. 

Two young men every way on a footing of 



Persistence. 167 

equality and friendship may be one of them a 
battalion-commander and the other a staff-offi- 
cer. It would be alike absurd for the one to 
take airs about not obeying a man every way 
his equal, and for the other to assume airs ol 
lordly dictation out of the sphere of his military 
duties. The mooting of the question of mar- 
ital authority between two well-bred, well-edu- 
cated Christian people of the nineteenth cen- 
tury is no less absurd. 

While the husband has a certain power con- 
fided to him for the support and maintenance 
of the family, and for the preservation of those 
relations which involve its good name and well- 
being before the world, he has no claim to an 
authoritative exertion of will in reference to the 
little personal tastes and habits of the interior. 
He has no divine right to require that every- 
thing shall be arranged to please him, at the 
expense of his wife's preferences and feelings, 
any more than if he were not the head of the 
household. In a thousand indifferent matters 



1 68 ^ Little Foxes. 

which do not touch the credit and respecta- 
bility of the family, he is just as much bound 
sometimes to give up his own will and way for 
the comfort of his wife as she is in certain 
other matters to submit to his decisions. In a 
large number of cases the husband and wife 
stand as equal human beings before God, and 
the indulgence of unchecked and inconsiderate 
self-will on either side is a sin. 

It is my serious belief that writings such as 
we have been considering do harm both to men 
and women, by insensibly inspiring in the one 
an idea of a licensed prerogative of selfishness 
and self-will, and in the other an irrational and 
indiscreet servility. 

Is it any benefit to a man to find in the wife 
of his bosom the flatterer of his egotism, the ac- 
quiescent victim of his little selfish exactions, to 
be nursed and petted and cajoled in all his faults 
and fault-findings, and to see everybody faUing 
prostrate before his will in the domestic circle ? 
Is this the true way to make him a manly and 



Persistence. 169 

Christ-like man ? It is my belief that many so- 
called good wives have been accessory to mak- 
ing their husbands very bad Christians. 

However, then, the little questions of differ- 
ence in every-day life are to be disposed of be- 
tween two individuals, it is in the worst possible 
taste and policy to undertake to settle them by 
mere authority. All romance, all poetry, all 
beauty are over forever with a couple between 
whom the struggle of mere authority has begun. 
No, there is no way out of difficulties of this de- 
scription but by the application, on both sides, 
of good sense and religion to the little differ- 
ences of life. 

A little reflection will enable any person to 
detect in himself that setiiess in trifles which is 
the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will . 
and to establish over himself a jealous guardian- 
ship. 

Every man and every woman, in their self- 
training and self-culture, should study the art 
of giving up in little thi7tgs with a good grace. 
8 



I/O Little Foxes. 

The charm of polite society is formed by that 
sort of freedom and facility in all the members 
of a circle which makes each one pliable to the 
influences of the others, and sympathetic to 
slide into the moods and tastes of others without 
a jar. 

In courteous and polished circles, there are no 
stiff railroad-tracks, cutting straight through 
everything, and grating harsh thunders all along 
their course, but smooth, meandering streams, 
tranquilly bending hither and thither to every 
undulation of the flowery banks. What makes 
the charm of polite society would make no less 
the charm of domestic life ; but it can come only 
by watchfulness and self-discipline in each indi- 
vidual. 

Some people have much more to struggle 
with in this way than others. Nature has 
made them precise and exact. They are punc- 
tilious in their hours, rigid in their habits, 
pained by any deviation, from regular rule. 

Now Nature is always perversely ordering 



Persistence. 1 7 1 

that men and women of just this disposition 
should become desperately enamored of their 
exact opposites. The man of rules and formu- 
las and hours has his heart carried off by a 
gay, careless little chit, who never knows the 
day of the month, tears up the newspaper, lo- 
ses the door-key, and makes curl-papers out of 
the last bill ; or, per contra, our exact and pre- 
cise little woman, whose belongings are like 
the waxen cells of a bee, gives her heart to 
some careless fellow, who enters her sanctum 
in muddy boots, upsets all her Httle nice house- 
hold divinities whenever he is going on a 
hunting or fishing bout, and can see no man- 
ner of sense in the discomposure she feels in 
the case. 

What can such couples do, if they do not 
adopt the compromise of reason and sense, — 
if each arms his or her own peculiarities with 
the back force of persistent self-will, and runs 
them over the territories of the other ? 

A sensible man and woman, finding them- 



172 L it tie Foxes. 

selves thus placed, can govern themselves by 
a just philosophy, and, instead of carrying on 
a life-battle, can modify their own tastes and 
requirements, turn their eyes from traits which 
do not suit them to those which do, resolving, 
at all events, however reasonable be the taste 
or propensity which they sacrifice, to give up 
all rather than have domestic strife. 

There is one form which persistency takes 
that is peculiarly trying : I mean that persis- 
tency of opinion which deems it necessary to 
stop and raise an argument in self-defence on 
the slightest personal criticism. 

John tells his wife that she is half an hour 
late with her breakfast this morning, and she 
indignantly denies it. 

"But look at my watch!" 

"Your watch is n't right." 

" I set it by railroad time." 

" Well, that was a week ago ; that watch of 
yours always gains." 

"No, my dear, you 're mistaken." 



Persistence. 1 73 

'Indeed I'm not. Did I not hear you tell- 
ing Mr. B about it.?" 

"My dear, that was a year ago, — before I 
had it cleaned." 

" How can you say so, John 1 It was only 
a month ago." 

"My dear, you are mistaken." 

And so the contest goes on, each striv- 
ing for the last word. 

This love of the last word has made more 
bitterness in families and spoiled more Chris- 
tians than it is worth. A thousand little dif- 
ferences of this kind would drop to the ground, 
if either party would let them drop. Suppose 
John is mistaken in saying breakfast is late, 
— suppose that fifty of the little criticisms which 
v/e make on one another are well- or ill-found- 
ed, are they worth a discussion 1 Are they 
worth ill-tempered words, such as are al- 
most sure to grow out of a discussion } Are 
they worth throwing away peace and love 
for.? Are they worth the destruction of the 



1 74 Little Foxes. 

only fair ideal left on earth, — a quiet, happy 
home? Better let the most unjust statements 
pass in silence than risk one's temper in a dis- 
cussion upon them. 

Discussions, assuming the form of warm ar- 
guments, are never pleasant ingredients of do- 
mestic life, never safe recreations between 
near friends. They are, generally speaking, 
mere unsuspected vents for self-will, and the 
cases are few where they do anything more 
than to make both parties more positive in 
their own way than they were before. 

A calm comparison of opposing views, a fair 
statement of reasons on either side, may be 
valuable ; but when warmth and heat and 
love of victory and pride of opinion come in, 
good temper and good manners are too apt to 
step out. 

And now Christopher, having come to the 
end of his subject, pauses for a sentence to 
close with. There are a few lines of a poet 
that sum up so beautifully all he has been 



Persistence, 175 

saying that he may be pardoned for closing 
with them. 

" Alas ! how light a cause may move 
Dissension between hearts that love ; 
Hearts that the world has vainly tried, 
And sorrow but more closely tied; 
That stood the storm when waves were rough, 
Yet in a sunny hour fall off, 
Like ships that have gone down at sea 
When heaven was all tranquillity! 
A something light as air, a look, 
A word unkind, or wrongly taken, — 
O, love that tempests never shook, 
A breath, a touch like this hath shaken! 
For ruder words will soon rush in 
To spread the breach that words begin, 
And eyes forget the gentle ray 
They wore in courtship's smiling day, 
And voices lose the tone which shed 
A tenderness round all they said, — 
Till, fast declining, one by one. 
The sweetnesses of love are gone, 
And hearts so lately mingled seem 
Like broken clouds, or like the stream, 
That, smiling, left the mountain-brow 
As though its waters ne'er could sever, 
Yet, ere it reach the plain below. 
Breaks into floods that part forever." 



INTOLERANCE. 

" A ND what are you going to preach about 
this month, Mr. Crowfield ? " 

" I am going to gi^e a sermon on Intolerance, 
Mrs. Crowfield." 

" ReUgious intolerance } " 

"No, — domestic and family and educational 
intolerance, — one of the seven deadly sins on 
which I am preaching, — one of 'the foxes.'" 

People are apt to talk as if all the intoler- 
ance in life were got up and expended in the 
religious world ; whereas religious intolerance 
is only a small branch of the radical, strong, 
all-pervading intolerance of human lature. 

Physicians are quite as intolerant as theolo- 
gians. They never have had the power of 
burning at the stake for medical opinions, but 



Intolerance, 177 

they certainly have shown the will. Politicians 
are intolerant. Philosophers are intolerant, es- 
pecially those who pique themselves on liberal 
opinions. Painters and sculptors are intolerant. 
And housekeepers are intolerant, virulently de- 
nunciatory concerning any departures from 
their particular domestic creed. 

Mrs. Alexander Exact, seated at her domes 
tic altar, gives homiUes on the degeneracy of 
modern housekeeping equal to the lamentations 
of Dr. Holdfast as to the falling off from the 
good old faith. 

"Don't tell me about pillow-cases made with- 
out felling," says Mrs. Alexander ; " it 's slovenly 
and shiftless. I would n't have such a pillow- 
case in my house any more than I 'd have 
vermin." 

"But," says a trembling young housekeeper, 
conscious of unfelled pillow-cases at home, 
"don't you think, Mrs. Alexander, that some 
of these old traditions might be dispensed with ? 
It really is not necessary to do all the work 

8* L 



178 Little Foxes. 

that has been done so thoroughly and exactly, 
— to double-stitch every wristband, fell every 
seam, count ail the threads of gathers, and 
take a stitch to every gather. It makes beau- 
tiful sewing, to be sure ; but when a woman 
has a family of little children and a small in- 
come, if all her sewing is to be kept up in 
this perfect style, she wears her life out in 
stitching;. Had she not better slight a little, 
and get air and exercise ? " 

" Don't tell me about air and exercise ! What 
did my grandmother do ? Why, she did all her 
own work, and made grandfather's ruffled shirts 
besides, with the finest stitching and gathers ; 
and she found exercise enough, I warrant you 
Women of this day are miserable, sickly, de- 
generate creatures." 

"But, my dear Madam, look at poor Mrs. 
Evans, over the way, with her pale face and 
her eight little ones." 

" Miserable manager," said Mrs. Alexander. 
" If she 'd get up at five o'clock the year round, 



Intolerance, 1 79 

as I do, she 'd find time enough to do things 
properly, and be the better for it." 

"But, my dear Madam, Mrs. Evans is a very 
• delicately organized, nervous woman." 

" Nervous ! Don't tell me ! Every woman 
now-a-days is nervous. She can't get up in the 
morning, because she 's nervous. She can't do 
her sewing decently, because she 's nervous. 
Why, I might have been as nervous as she is, 
if I 'd have petted and coddled myself as she 
does. But I get up early, take a walk in the 
fresh air of a mile or so before breakfast, and 
come home feeling the better for it. I do all 
my own sewing, — never put out a stitch ; and 
I flatter myself my things are made as they 
ought to be. I always make my boys' shirts 
and Mr. Exact' s, and they are made as shirts 
ought to be, — and yet I find plenty of time 
for calling, shopping, business, and company. 
It only requires management and resolution." 

"It is perfectly wonderful, to be sure, Mrs. 
Exact, to see all that you do ; but don't you 
get very tired sometimes?" 



i8o Little Foxes. 

"No, not often. I remember, though, the 
week before last Christmas, I made and baked 
eighteen pies and ten loaves of cake in one 
day, and I was really quite worn out ; but I 
did n't give way to it. I told Mr. Exact I 
thought it would rest me to take a drive into 
New York and attend the Sanitary Fair ; and 
so we did. I suppose Mrs. Evans would have 
thought she must go to bed and coddle her- 
self for a month." 

"But, dear Mrs. Exact, when a woman is 
kept awake nights by crying babies — " 

" There 's no need of having crying babies ; 
my babies never cried ; it 's just as you begin 
with children. I might have had to be up and 
down every hour of the night with mine, just 
as Mrs. Evans does ; but I knew better. I used 
to take 'em up about ten o'clock, and feed and 
make 'em all comfortable ; and that was the 
last of 'em, till I was ready to get up in the 
morning. I never lost a night's sleep with any 
of mine." 



Intolerance. i8i 

** Not when they were teething ? " 

"No. I knew how to manage that. I used 
to lance their gums myself, and I never had 
any trouble : it 's all in management. I weaned 
'em all myself, too : there 's no use in having 
any fuss in weaning children." 

" Mrs. Exact, you are a wonderful manager ; 
but it would be impossible to bring up all ba- 
bies so." 

" You '11 never make me believe that : peo- 
ple only need to begin right. I 'm sure I 've 
had a trial of eight." 

" But there 's that one baby of Mrs. Evans's 
makes more trouble than all your eight. It 
cries every night so that somebody has to be 
up walking with it ; it wears out all the nurses, 
and keeps poor Mrs. Evans sick all the time." 

" Not the least need of it ; nothing but shift- 
less management. Suppose I had allowed my 
children to be walked with ; I might have had 
terrible times, too ; but I began right. I set 
down my foot that they should lie still, and 



1 82 Little Foxes, 

they did ; and if they cried, I never lighted a 
candle, or took 'em up, or took any kind of 
notice of it ; and so, after a little, they went off 
to sleep. Babies very soon find out where 
they can take advantage, and where they can't. 
It 's nothing but temper makes babies cry ; and 
if I could n't hush 'em any other way, I should 
give 'em a few good smart slaps, and they 
would soon learn to behave themselves." 

"But, dear Mrs. Exact, you were a strong, 
healthy woman, and had strong, healthy chil- 
dren." 

" Well, is n't that baby of Mrs. Evans's heal- 
thy, I want to know } I 'm sure it is a great 
creature, and thrives and grows fat as fast as 
ever I saw a child. You need n't tell me any- 
thing is the matter with that child but temper, 
and its mother's coddling management." 

Now, in the neighborhood where she lives, 
Mrs. Alexander Exact is the wonderful woman, 
the Lady Bountiful, the pattern female. Her 
cake never rises on one side, or has a heavy 



Intolerajice. 1 83 

streak in it. Her furs never get a moth in 
them ; her carpets never fade ; her sweetmeats 
never ferment ; her servants never neglect their 
work ; her children never get things out of 
order; her babies never cry, never keep one 
awake o' nights ; and her husband never in his 
life said, " My dear, there 's a button off my 
shirt." Flies never infest her kitchen, cock- 
roaches and red ants never invade her prem- 
ises, a spider never had time to spin a web 
on one of her walls. Everything in her estab- 
lishment is shining with neatness, crisp and 
bristling with absolute perfection, — -'and it is 
she, the ever-up-and-dresscd, unsleeping, wide- 
awake, omnipresent, never-tiring Mrs. Exact, 
that does it all. 

Besides keeping her household ways thus 
immaculate, Mrs. Exact is on all sorts of char- 
itable committees, does all sorts of fancy-work 
for fairs ; and whatever she does is done per- 
fectly. She is a most available, most helpful, 
most benevolent woman, and general society 
has reason to rejoice in her existence. 



184 Little Foxes, 

But, for all this, Mrs. Exact is as intolerant 
as Torquemada or a locomotive-engine. She 
has her own track, straight and inevitable ; her 
judgments and opinions cut through society 
in right lines, with all the force of her exam- 
ple and all the steam of her energy, turning 
out neither for the old nor the young, the weak 
nor the weary. She cannot, and she will not, 
conceive the possibility that there may be other 
sorts of natures than her own, and that other 
kinds of natures must have other ways of liv- 
ing and doing. 

Good and useful as she is, she is terrible as 
an army with banners to her poor, harassed, 
delicate, struggling neighbor across the way, 
who, in addition to an aching, confused head, 
an aching back, sleepless, harassed nights, and 
weary, sinking days, is burdened everywhere 
and every hour with the thought that Mrs. 
Exact thinks all her troubles are nothing but 
poor management, and that she might do just 
like her, if she would. With very little self- 



Intolerance. 185 

confidence or self-assertion, she is withered and 
paralyzed by this discouraging thought. Is it, 
then, her fault that this never-sleeping baby 
cries all night, and that all her children never 
could and never would be brought up by those 
exact rules which she hears of as so efficacious 
in the household over the way? The thought 
of Mrs. Alexander Exact stands over her like 
a constable ; the remembrance of her is griev- 
ous ; the burden of her opinion is heavier than 
all her other burdens. 

Now the fact is, that Mrs. Exact comes of 
a long-lived, strong-backed, strong-stomached 
race, with " limbs of British oak and nerves of 
wire." The shadow of a sensation of nervous 
pain or uneasiness never has been known in 
her family for generations, and her judgments 
of poor little Mrs. Evans are about as intelli- 
gent as those of a good stout Shanghai hen 
on a humming-bird. Most useful and comfort- 
able, these Shanghai hens, — and very orna- 
mental, and in a small way useful, these hum- 



1 86 Little Foxes. 

ming-birds ; but let them not regulate each 
other's diet, or lay down schemes for each oth- 
er's housekeeping. Has not one as much right 
to its nature as the other ? 

This intolerance of other people's natures is 
one of the greatest causes of domestic unhap- 
piness. The perfect householders are they who 
make their household rule so flexible that all 
sorts of differing natures may find room to 
grow and expand and express themselves with- 
out infringing upon others. 

Some women are endowed with a tact for 
understanding human nature and guiding it. 
They give a sense of largeness and freedom ; 
they find a place for every one, see at once 
what every one is good for, and are inspired by 
Nature with the happy wisdom of not wishing 
or asking of any human being more than that 
human being was made to give. They have 
the portion in due season for all : a bone for 
the dog ; catnip for the cat ; cuttle-fish and 
hempseed for the bird ; a book or review for 



Intolerance. 187 

their bashful literary visitor ; lively gossip 
for thoughtless Miss Seventeen ; knitting for 
Grandmamma ; fishing-rods, boats, and gun- 
powder, for Young Restless, whose beard is 
just beginning to grow; — and they never fall 
into pets, because the canary-bird won't relish 
the dog's bone, or the dog eat canary-seed, or 
young Miss Seventeen read old Mr. Sixty's 
review, or young Master Restless take delight 
in knitting-work, or old Grandmamma feel 
complacency in guns and gunpowder. 

Again, there are others who lay the founda- 
tions of family life so narrow, straight, and 
strict, that there is room in them only for 
themselves and people exactly like themselves ; 
and hence comes much misery. 

A man and woman come together out of 
different families and races, often united by 
only one or two sympathies, with many differ- 
ences. Their first wisdom would be to find 
out each other's nature, and accommodate to 
it as a fixed fact ; instead of which, how many 



1 88 Little Foxes. 

spend their lives in a blind fight with an oppo- 
site nature, as good as their own in its way, 
but not capable of meeting their requirements ! 
A woman trained in an exact, thriving, busi- 
ness family, where her father and brothers bore 
everything along with true worldly skill md 
energy, falls in love with a literary man, who 
knows nothing of affairs, whose life is in his 
library and his pen. Shall she vex and tor- 
ment herself and him because he is not a busi- 
ness man ? Shall she constantly hold up to 
him the example of her father and brothers, 
and how they would manage in this and that 
case ? or shall she say cheerily and once for all 
to herself, — "My husband has no talent for 
business ; that is not his forte ; but then he 
has talents far more interesting : I cannot have 
everything ; let him go on undisturbed, and do 
what he can do well, and let me try to make up 
for what he cannot do ; and if there be disa- 
bilities come on us in consequence of what we 
neither of us can do, let us both take them 
cheerfully " ? 



Intolermice. 189 

In the same manner a man takes out of the 
bosom of an adoring family one of those deli- 
cate, petted singing-birds that seem to be cre- 
ated simply to adorn life and make it charming. 
Is it fair, after he has got her, to compare her 
housekeeping, and her efficiency and capability 
in the material part of life, with those of his 
mother and sisters, who are strong-limbed, prac- 
tical women, that have never thought about 
anything but housekeeping from their cradle ? 
Shall he all the while vex himself and her with 
the remembrance of how his mother used to 
get up at five o'clock and arrange all the busi- 
ness of the day, — how she kept all the ac- 
counts, — how she saw to everything and set- 
tled everything, — how there never were break- 
downs or irregularities in her system ? 

This would be unfair. If a man wanted such 
a housekeeper, why did he not get one 1 There 
were plenty of single women, who understood 
washing, ironing, clear-starching, cooking, and 
general housekeeping, better than the little ca- 



1 90 Little Foxes. 

nary-bird which he fell in love with, and wanted 
for her plumage and her song, for her merry 
tricks, for her bright eyes and pretty ways. 
Now he has got his bird, let him keep it as 
something fine and precious, to be cared for 
and watched over, and treated according to the 
laws of its frail and dehcate nature ; and so 
treating it, he may many years keep the charms 
which first won his heart. He may find, too, 
if he watches and is careful, that a humming- 
bird can, in its own small, dainty way, build a 
nest as efiiciently as a turkey-gobbler, and 
hatch her eggs and bring up her young in 
humming-bird fashion ; but to do it, she must 
be left unfrightened and undisturbed. 

But the evils of domestic intolerance increase 
with the birth of children. As parents come 
together out of different families with ill-as- 
sorted peculiarities, so children are born to 
them with natures differing from their own and 
from each other. 

The parents seize on their first new child as 



Intolerance. 191 

a piece of special property which they are 
forthwith to turn to their own account The 
poor little waif, just drifted on the shores of 
Time, has perhaps folded up in it a character 
as positive as that of either parent ; but, for all 
that, its future course is marked out for it, all 
arranged and predetermined. 

John has a perfect mania for literary distinc- 
tion. His own education was somewhat imper- 
fect, but he is determined his children shall be 
prodigies. His first-born turns out a girl, who 
is to write like Madame de Stael, — to be an 
able, accompUshed woman. He bores her with 
literature from her earliest years, reads extracts 
from Milton to her when she is only eight 
years old, and is secretly longing to be playing 
with her doll's wardrobe. He multiplies gov- 
ernesses, spares no expense, and when, after 
all, his daughter turns out to be only a very 
pretty, sensible, domestic girl, fond of cross- 
stitching embroidery, and with a more decided 
vocation for sponge-cake and pickles than for 



192 Little Foxes. 

poetry and composition, he is disappointed and 
treats her coldly ; and she is unhappy and 
feels that she has vexed her parents, because 
she cannot be what Nature never meant her to 
be. If John had taken meekly the present 
that Mother Nature gave him, and humbly set 
himself to inquire what it was and what it was 
good for, he might have had years of happiness 
with a modest, amiable, and domestic daughter, 
to whom had been given the instinct to study 
household good. 

But, again, a bustling, pickling, preserving, 
stocking-knitting, universal-housekeeping wo- 
man has a daughter who dreams over her knit- 
ting-work and hides a book under her sampler, 
— whose thoughts are straying in Greece, Rome, 
Germany, — who is reading, studying, thinking, 
writing, without knowing why ; and the mother 
sets herself to fight this nature, and to make 
the dreamy scholar into a driving, thorough- 
going, exact woman-of-business. How many 
tears are shed, how much temper wasted, how 
much time lost, in such encounters ! 



Intolerance. 193 

Each of these natures, under judicious train- 
ing, might be made to complete itself by cul- 
tivation of that which it lacked. The born 
housekeeper can never be made a genius, but 
she may add to her household virtues some rea- 
sonable share of literary culture and apprecia- 
tion, — and the born scholar may learn to 
come down out of her clouds, and see enough 
of this earth to walk its practical ways without 
stumbling ; but this must be done by tolerance 
of their nature, — by giving it play and room, 
— first recognizing its existence and its rights, 
and then seeking to add to it the properties 
it wants. 

A clever Yankee housekeeper, fruitful of re- 
sources, can work with any tools or with no 
tools at all. If she absolutely cannot get a 
tack-hammer with a claw on one end, she can 
take up carpet-nails with an iron spoon, and 
drive them down with a flat-iron ; and she has 
sense enough not to scold, though she does her 
work with them at considerable disadvantage. 



194 Little Foxes. 

She knows that she is working with tools made 
for another purpose, and never thinks of being 
angry at their unhandiness. She might have 
equal patience with a daughter unhandy in 
physical things, but acute and skilful in mental 
ones, if she once had the idea suggested to 
her. 

An ambitious man has a son whom he des- 
tines to a learned profession. He is to be the 
Daniel Webster of the family. The boy has 
a robust, muscular frame, great physical vigor 
and enterprise, a brain bright and active in all 
that may be acquired through the bodily senses, 
but which is dull and confused and wandering 
when put to abstract book-knowledge. He 
knows every ship at the wharf, her build, ton- 
nage, and sailing qualities ; he knows every 
railroad-engine, its power, speed, and hours of 
coming and going; he is always busy, sawing, 
hammering, planing, digging, driving, making 
bargains, with his head full of plans, all relat- 
ing to something outward and physical. In all 



Intolerance. 195 

these matters his mind works strongly, his 
ideas are clear, his observation acute, his con- 
versation sensible and worth listening to. But 
as to the distinction between common nouns 
and proper nouns, between the subject and the 
predicate of a sentence, between the relative 
pronoun and the demonstrative adjective pro- 
noun, between the perfect and the preter-per- 
fect tense, he is extremely dull and hazy. The 
region of abstract ideas is to him a region of 
ghosts and shadows. Yet his youth is mainly 
a dreary wilderness of un comprehended, in- 
comprehensible studies, of privations, tasks, 
punishments, with a sense of continual failure, 
disappointment, and disgrace, because his father 
is trying to make a scholar and a literary man 
out of a boy whom Nature made to till the 
soil or manage the material forces of the world. 
He might be a farmer, an engineer, a pioneer 
of a new settlement, a sailor, a soldier, a thriv- 
ing man of business ; but he grows up feeling 
that his nature is a crime, and that he is good 



196 Little Foxes. 

for nothing, because he is not good for what 
he had been blindly predestined to before he 
Vvas born. 

Another boy is a born mechanic ; he under- 
stands machinery at a glance ; he is all the 
while pondering and studying and experiment- 
ing. But his wheels and his axles and his 
pulleys are all swept away, as so much irrele- 
vant lumber ; he is doomed to go into the Latin 
School, and spend three or four years in try- 
ing to learn what he never can learn well, — 
disheartened by always being at the tail of 
his class, and seeing many a boy inferior to 
himself in general culture who is rising to bril- 
liant distinction simply because he can remem- 
ber those hopeless, bewildering Greek quanti- 
ties and accents which he is constantly forget- 
ting, — as, for example, how properispomena 
become paroxytones when the ultimate becomes 
long, and proparoxytones become paroxytones 
when the ultimate becomes long, while paroxy- 
tones with a short penult remain paroxytones. 



Intolerance. 197 

Each of this class of rules, however, having 
about sixteen exceptions, which hold good ex- 
cept in three or four other exceptional cases 
under them, the labyrinth becomes delightfully 
wilder and wilder ; and the crowning beauty 
of the whole is, that, when the bewildered boy 
has swallowed the whole, — tail, scales, fins, 
and bones, — he then is allowed to read the 
classics in peace, without the slightest occa- 
sion to refer to them again during his college 
course. 

The great trouble with the so-called classi- 
cal course of education is, that it is made 
strictly for but one class of minds, which it 
drills in respects for which they have by na- 
ture an aptitude, and to which it presents 
scarcely enough of difficulty to make it a men- 
tal discipline, while to another and equally valu- 
able class of minds it presents difficulties so 
great as actually to crush and discourage. 
There are, we will venture to say, in every 
ten boys in Boston, four, and those not the 



198 Little Foxes. 

dullest or poorest in quality, who could never 
go through the discipline of the Boston Latin 
School without such a strain on the brain and 
nervous system as would leave them no power 
for anything else. 

A bright, intelligent boy, whose talents lay 
in the line of natural philosophy and mechan- 
ics, passed with brilliant success through the 
Boston English High School. He won the 
first medals, and felt all that pride and enthu- 
siasm which belong to a successful student. 
He entered the Latin Classical School as the 
next step on his way to a collegiate education. 
With a large philosophic and reasoning brain, 
he had a very poor verbal and textual memory ; 
and here he began to see himself distanced 
by boys who had hitherto looked up to him. 
They could rattle off catalogues of names ; 
they could do so all the better from the habit 
of not thinking of what they studied. They 
could commit the Latin Grammar, coarse print 
and fine, and run through the interminable 



Intolerance. 199 

mazes of Greek accents and Greek inflections. 
This boy of large mind and brain found him- 
self always behindhand, and became, in time, 
utterly discouraged ; no amount of study could 
place him on an equality with his former infe- 
riors. His health failed, and he dropped from 
school. Many a fine fellow has been lost to 
himself, and lost to an educated life, by just 
such a failure. The collegiate system is like 
a great coal-screen : every piece not of a cer- 
tain size must fall through. This. may do well 
enough for screening coal ; but what if it were 
used indiscriminately for a mixture of coal and 
diamonds .'* 

" Poor boy ! " said Ole Bull, compassionately, 
when one sought to push a schoolboy from 
the steps of an omnibus, where he was getting 
a surreptitious ride. " Poor boy ! let him stay. 
Who knows his trials .'* Perhaps he studies 
Latin." 

The witty Heinrich Heine says, in bitter 
remembrance of his early sufferings, — "The 



200 Little Foxes. 

Romans would never have conquered the world, 
if they had had to learn their own language. 
They had leisure, because they were born with 
the knowledge of what nouns form their accu- 
satives in imr 

Now we are not among those who decry the 
Greek and Latin classics. We think it a glo- 
rious privilege to read both those grand old 
tongues, and that an intelligent, cultivated 
man who is shut out from the converse of the 
splendid minds of those olden times loses a 
part of his birthright ; and therefore it is that 
we mourn that but one dry, hard, technical 
path, one sharp, straight, narrow way, is al- 
lowed into so goodly a land of knowledge. 
We think there is no need that the study of 
Greek and Latin should be made such a hor- 
ror. There is many a man without a verbal 
memory, who could neither recite in order the 
paradigms of the Greek verbs, nor repeat the 
lists of nouns that form their accusative in 
one termination or another, who, nevertheless. 



Intolerance. 20 1 

Dy the exercise of his faculties of comparison 
and reasoning, could learn to read the Greek 
and Latin classics so as to take their sense 
and enjoy their spirit ; and that is all that is 
worth caring for. We have known one young 
scholar, who could not by any possibility re- 
peat the lists of exceptions to the rules in the 
Latin Grammar, who yet delightedly filled his 
private note-book with quotations from the 
"^neid," and was making extracts of literary 
gems from his Greek Reader, at the same time 
that he was every day "screwed" by his tutoi 
upon some technical point of the language. 

Is there not many a master of English, many 
a writer and orator, who could not repeat from 
memory the list of nouns ending in y that 
form their plural in ies^ with the exceptions 
under it } How many of us could do this t 
Would it help a good writer and fluent speaker 
to know the whole of Murray's Grammar by 
heart, or does real knowledge of a language 
ever come in this way? 
9* 



202 Little Foxes. 

At present the rich stores of ancient litera- 
ture are kept like the savory stew which poor 
Dominie Sampson heard simmering in the 
witch's kettle. One may have much appetite, 
but there is but one way of getting it. The 
Meg Merrilies of our educational system, with 
her harsh voice, and her " Gape, sinner, and 
swallow," is the only introduction, — and so, 
many a one turns and runs frightened from 
the feast. 

This intolerant mode of teaching the classi- 
cal languages is peculiar to them alone. Mul- 
titudes of girls and boys are learning to read 
and to speak German, French, and Italian, and 
to feel, all the delights of expatiating in the lit- 
erature of a new language, purely because of a 
simpler, more natural, less pedantic mode of 
teaching these languages. 

Intolerance in the established system of edu- 
cation works misery in families, because family 
pride decrees that every boy of good status in 
society, will he, nill he, shall go through col- 



Intolerance. 203 

lege, or he almost forfeits his position as a 
gentleman. 

" Not go to Cambridge ! " says Scholasticus 
to his first-born. " Why, I went there, — and 
my father, and his father, and his father before 
him. Look at the Cambridge Catalogue and 
you will see the names of our family ever since 
the College was founded ! " 

"But I can't learn Latin and Greek," says 
young Scholasticus. " I can't remember all 
those rules and exceptions. I 've tried, and I 
can't. If you could only know how my head 
feels when I try ! And I won't be at the foot 
of the class all the time, if I have to get my 
living by digging." 

Suppose, now, the boy is pushed on at the 
point of the bayonet to a kind of knowledge 
in which he has no interest, communicated in 
a way that requires faculties which Nature has 
not given him, — what occurs } 

He goes through his course, either shamming, 
shirking^ p07iying, all the while consciously dis- 



204 Little Foxes. 

credited and dishonored, — or else, putting forth 
an effort that is a draft on all his nervous 
energy, he makes merely a decent scholar, 
and loses his health for life. 

Now, if the principle of toleration were once 
admitted into classical education, — if it were 
admitted that the great object is to read and 
enjoy a language, and the stress of the teach- 
ing were placed on the few things absolutely 
essential to this result, — if the tortoise were 
allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted 
to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the en- 
chanted and divine sources of Helicon, — all 
might in their own way arrive there, and re- 
joice in its flowers, its beauty, and its cool- 
ness. 

" But," say the advocates of the present sys- 
tem, "it is good mental discipline." 

I doubt it. It is mere waste of time. 

When a boy has learned that in the genitive 
plural of the first declension of Greek nouns the 
final syllable is circumflexed, but to this there 



Intolerance, 205 

are the following exceptions : i. That feminine 
adjectives and participles in -09, -^, -ov are ac- 
cented like the genitive masculine, but other 
feminine adjectives and participles are peris- 
pomena in the genitive plural ; 2. That the 
substantives chrestes^ apktie, etesiai, and chlounes 
in the genitive plural remain paroxytones, 
(Kiihner's Elementary Greek Grammar, page 22,) 
— I say, when a boy has learned this and 
twenty other things just like it, his mind has 
not been one whit more disciplined than if he 
had learned the list of the old thirteen States, 
the number and names of the newly adopted 
ones, the times of their adoption, and the pop- 
ulation, commerce, mineral and agricultural 
wealth of each. These, too, are merely exer- 
cises of memory, but they are exercises in what 
is of some interest and some use. 

The particulars above cited are of so little 
use in understanding the Greek classics that I 
will venture to say that there are intelligent 
English scholars, who have never read any- 



2o6 Little Foxes. 

thing but Bohn's translations, who have more 
genuine knowledge of the spirit of the Greek 
mind, and the peculiar idioms of the language, 
and more enthusiasm for it, than many a poor 
fellow who has stumbled blindly through the 
originals with the bayonet of the tutor at his 
heels, and his eyes and ears full of the Scotch 
snuff of the Greek Grammar. 

What then ? Shall we not learn these an- 
cient tongues ? By all means. " So many 
times as I learn a language, so many times I 
become a man," said Charles V. ; and he said 
rightly. Latin and Greek are foully belied by 
the prejudices created by this technical, pedan- 
tic mode of teaching them, which makes one 
ragged, prickly bundle of all the dry facts of the 
language, and insists upon it that the boy shall 
not see one glimpse of its beauty, glory, or in- 
terest, till he has swallowed and digested the 
whole mass. Many die in this wilderness with 
their shoes worn out before reaching the Prom- 
ised Land of Plato and the Tragedians. 



Intolerance. 207 

" But," say our college authorities, " look at 
England. An English schoolboy learns three 
times the Latin and Greek that our boys learn, 
and has them well drubbed in." 

And English boys have three times more 
beef and pudding in their constitution than 
American boys have, and three times less of 
nerves. The difference of nature must be con- 
sidered here ; and the constant influence flow- 
ing from English schools and universities must 
be tempered by considering who we are, what 
sort of boys we have to deal with, what treat- 
ment they can bear, and what are the needs of 
our growing American society. 

The demands of actual life, the living, visible 
facts of practical science, in so large and new 
a country as ours, require that the ideas of the 
ancients should be given us in the shortest 
and most economical way possible, and that 
scholastic technicalities should be reserved to 
those whom Nature made with especial refer- 
ence to their preservation. 



208 Little Foxes. 

On no subject is there more intolerant judg- 
ment, and more suffering from such intoler- 
ance, than on the much mooted one of the 
education of children. 

Treatises on education require altogether too 
much of parents, and impose burdens of respon- 
sibility on tender spirits which crush the life 
and strength out of them. Parents have been 
talked to as if each child came to them a soft, 
pulpy mass, which they were to pinch and pull 
and pat and stroke into shape quite at their 
leisure, — and a good pattern being placed be- 
fore them, they were to proceed immediately 
to set up and construct a good human being 
in conformity therewith. 

It is strange that believers in the divine in- 
spiration of the Bible should have entertained 
this idea, overlooking the constant and affect- 
ing declaration of the great Heavenly Father 
that He has nourished and brought up children 
and they have rebelled against Him, together 
with His constant appeals, — " What could 



Intolerance. 209 

have been done more to my vineyard that I 
have not done in it? Wherefore, when I 
looked that it should bring forth grapes, 
brought it forth wild grapes?" If even God, 
wiser, better, purer, more loving, admits Him- 
self baffled in this great work, is it expedient 
to say to human beings that the forming power, 
the deciding force, of a child's character is in 
their hands ? 

Many a poor feeble woman's health has been 
strained to breaking, and her life darkened, by 
the laying on her shoulders of a burden of re- 
sponsibility that never ought to have been 
placed there ; and many a mother has been 
hindered from using such powers as God has 
given her, because some preconceived mode 
of operation has been set up before her which 
she could no more make effectual than David 
could wear the armor of Saul. 

A gentle, loving, fragile creature marries a 
strong-willed, energetic man, and by the laws 
of natural descent has a boy given to her of 



210 Little Foxes. 

twice her amount of will and energy. She is 
just as helpless, in the mere struggle of will 
and authority with such a child, as she would 
be in a physical wrestle with a six-foot man. 

What then ? Has Nature left her help- 
less for her duties ? Not if she understands 
her nature, and acts in the line of it. She has 
no power of command, but she has power of 
persuasion. She can neither bend nor break 
the boy's iron will, but she can melt it. She 
has tact to avoid the conflict in which she 
would be worsted. She can charm, amuse, 
please, and make willing ; and her fine and 
subtile influences, weaving themselves about 
him day after day, become more and more 
powerful. Let her alone, and she will have 
her boy yet. 

But now some bustling mother-in-law or other 
privileged expounder says to her, — 

" My dear, it 's your solemn duty to break 
that boy's will. I broke my boy's will short 
off. Keep your whip in sight, meet him at 



Intolerance. 2 1 1 

every turn, fight him whenevei he crosses you, 
never let him get one victory, and finally his 
will will be wholly subdued." 

Such advice is mischievous, because what it 
proposes is as utter an impossibility to the wo- 
man's nature as for a cow to scratch up worms 
for her calf, or a hen to suckle her chickens. 

There are men and women of strong, reso- 
lute will who are gifted with the power of gov- 
erning the wills of others. Such persons can 
govern in this way, — and their government, 
being in the line of their nature, acting 
strongly, consistently, naturally, makes every- 
thing move harmoniously. Let them be con- 
tent with their own success, but let them not 
set up as general education-doctors, or apply 
their experience to all possible cases. 

Again, there are others, and among them 
some of the loveliest and purest natures, who 
have no power of command. They have suffi- 
cient tenacity of will as respects their own 
course, but have no compulsory power over the 



212 Little Foxes. 

wills of others. Many such women have been 
most successful mothers, when they followed 
the line of their own natures, and did not un- 
dertake what they never could do. 

Injluejice is a slower acting force than au- 
thority. It seems weaker, but in the long run 
it often effects more. It always does better 
than mere force and authority without its gen- 
tle modifying power. 

She who obtains an absolute and perfect 
government over a child, so that he obeys, cer- 
tainly and almost mechanically produces effects 
which are more appreciable in their immediate 
action on family life ; her family will be more 
orderly, her children in their childhood will do 
her more credit. 

But she who has consciously no power of 
this kind, whose children are often turbulent 
and unmanageable, need not despair if she 
feel that through affection, reason, and con- 
science, she still retains a strong influence over 
them. If she cannot govern her boy, she can 



Intolerance. 2 1 3 

do even a better thing if she can inspire him 
with a purpose to govern himself ; for a boy 
taught to govern himself is a better achieve- 
ment than a boy merely governed. 

If a mother, therefore, is high-principled, re- 
ligious, affectionate, if she never uses craft or 
deception, if she governs her temper and sets 
a good example, let her hold on in good hope, 
though she cannot produce the discipline of a 
man-of-war in her noisy little flock, or make 
all move as smoothly as some other women to 
whom God has given another and different tal- 
ent ; and let her not be discouraged, if she 
seem often to accomplish but little in that 
arduous work of forming human character 
wherein the great Creator of the world has 
declared Himself at times baffled. 

Family tolerance must take great account of 
the stages and periods of development and 
growth in children. 

The passage of a human being from one stage 
of development to another, like the sun's pas- 



214 Little Foxes. 

sage across the equator, frequently has its 
storms and tempests. The change to man- 
hood and womanhood often involves brain, 
nerves, body, and soul in confusion ; the child 
sometimes seems lost to himself and his par- 
ents, — his very nature changing. In this sen- 
sitive state come restless desires, unreasonable 
longings, unsettled purposes ; and the fatal 
habit of indulgence in deadly stimulants, ruin- 
ing all the life, often springs from the cravings 
of this transition period. 

Here must come in the patience of the saints. 
The restlessness must be soothed, the family 
hearth must be tolerant enough to keep there 
the boy, whom Satan will receive and cherish, 
if his mother does not. The male element 
sometimes pours into a boy, like the tides in 
the Bay of Fundy, with tumult and tossing. 
He is noisy, vociferous, uproarious, and seems 
bent only on disturbance ; he despises conven- 
tionalities, he hates parlors, he longs for the 
woods, the sea, the converse of rough men, 



Intolerance. 2 1 5 

and kicks at constraint of all kinds. Have 
patience now, let love have its perfect work, 
and in a year or two, if no deadly physical 
habits set in, a quiet, well-mannered gentle- 
man will be evolved. Meanwhile, if he does 
not wipe his shoes, and if he will fling his hat 
upon the floor, and tear his clothes, and bang 
and hammer and shout, and cause general con- 
fusion in his belongings, do not despair ; for 
if you only get your son, the hat and clothea 
and shoes and noise and confusion do not mat- 
ter. Any amount of toleration that keeps a 
boy contented at home is treasure well ex- 
pended at this time of life. 

One thing not enough reflected on is, that 
in this transition period between childhood and 
maturity the heaviest draft and strain of school 
education occurs. The boy is fitting for the 
university, the girl going through the studies 
of the college senior year, and the brain-power, 
which is working almost to the breaking-point 
to perfect the physical change, has the addi- 



2i6 Little Foxes. 

tional labor of all the drill and discipline of 
school. 

The girl is growing into a tall and shapel} 
woman, and the poor brain is put to it to find 
enough phosphate of lime, carbon, and other 
what not, to build her fair edifice. The bills 
flow in upon her thick and fast ; she pays out 
hand over hand : if she had only her woman 
to build, she might get along, but now come in 
demands for algebra, geometry, music, language, 
and the poor brain-bank stops payment ; some 
part of the work is shabbily done, and a crooked 
spine or weakened lungs are the result. 

Boarding-schools, both for boys and girls, 
are for the most part composed of young peo- 
ple in this most delicate, critical portion of 
their physical, mental, and moral development, 
whose teachers are expected to put them 
through one straight, severe course of drill, 
without the slightest allowance for the great 
physical facts of their being. No wonder they 
are difficult to manage, and that so many of 



Intolerance. 217 

them drop, physically, mentally, and morally 
halt and maimed. It is not the teacher's fault ; 
he but fulfils the parent's requisition, which 
dooms his child without appeal to a certain 
course, simply because others have gone through 
it. 

Finally, as my sermon is too long already, 
let me end with a single reflection. Every 
human being has some handle by which he' 
may be lifted, some groove in which he was 
meant to run ; and the great work of life, as 
far as our relations with each other are con- 
cerned, is to lift each one by his own proper 
handle, and run each one in his own proper 
groove. 



10 



VI. 

DISCOURTESY. 

" TIJ* OR my part," said my wife, " I think one 
of the greatest destroyers of domestic 
peace is Discourtesy. People neglect, with 
their nearest friends, those refinements and 
civilities which they practise with strangers." 

" My dear Madam, I am of another opinion," 
said Bob Stephens. " The restraints of eti- 
quette, the formalities of ceremony, are tedious 
enough in out-door life ; but when a man 
comes home, he wants leave to take off his 
tight boots and gloves, wear the gown and 
slippers, and speak his mind freely without 
troubling his head where it hits. Home-life 
should be the communion of people who have 
learned to understand each other, who allow 
each other a generous latitude and freedom. 
One wants one place where he may feel at 



Discourtesy. 219 

liberty to be tired or dull or disagreeable with- 
out ruining his character. Home is the place 
where we should expect to live somewhat on 
the credit which a full knowledge of each oth- 
er's goodness and worth inspires ; and it is 
not necessary for intimate friends to go every 
day through those civilities and attentions which 
they practise with strangers, any more than it 
is necessary, among literary people, to repeat 
the alphabet over every day before one begins 
to read." 

" Yes," said Jennie, " when a young gentle- 
man is paying his addresses, he helps a young 
lady out of a carriage so tenderly, and holds 
back her dress so adroitly, that not a particle 
of mud gets on it from the wheels ; but when 
the mutual understanding is complete, and the 
affection perfect, and she is his wife, he sits 
still and holds the horse and lets her climb 
out alone. To be sure, when pretty Miss Tit- 
mouse is visiting them, he still shows himself 
gallant, flies from the carriage, and holds back 



220 Little Foxes. 

her dress : that 's because he does n't love her 
nor she him, and they are not on the ground 
of mutual affection. When a gentleman is 
only engaged, or a friend, if you hem him a 
cravat or mend his gloves, he thanks you in 
the blandest manner ; but when you are once 
sure of his affection, he only says, * Very well ; 
now I wish you would look over my shirts, 
and mend that rip in my coat, — and be sure 
don't forget it, as you did yesterday.' For all 
which reasons," said Miss Jennie, with a toss 
of her pretty head, " I mean to put off marry- 
ing as long as possible, because I think it far 
more agreeable to have gentlemen friends with 
whom I stand on the ground of ceremony and 
politeness than to be restricted to one who is 
living on the credit of his affection. I don't 
want a man who gapes in my face, reads a 
newspaper all breakfast -time while I want 
somebody to talk to, smokes cigars all the 
evening, or reads to himself when I would like 
him to be entertaining, and considers his affec- 



Discourtesy. 221 

tion for me as his right and title to make him- 
self generally disagreeable. If he has a bright 
face, and pleasant, entertaining, gallant ways, 
I like to be among the ladies who may have 
the benefit of them, and should take care how 
I lost my title to it by coming with him on 
to the ground of domestic affection." 

" Well, Miss Jennie," said Bob, " it is n't 
merely our sex who are guilty of making them- 
selves less agreeable after marriage. Your 
dapper little fairy creatures, who dazzle us so 
with wondrous and fresh toilettes, who are so 
trim and neat and sprightly and enchanting, 
what becomes of them after marriage } If Jie 
reads the newspaper at the breakfast-table, per- 
haps it 's because there is a sleepy, dowdy wo- 
man opposite, in a faded gingham wrapper, put 
on in the sacredness of domestic privacy, and 
perhaps she has laid aside those crisp, spark- 
ling, bright little sayings and doings that used 
to make it impossible to look at or listen to 
anybody else when she was about. Such things 



222 Little Foxes. 

are^ sometimes, among the goddesses, I believe. 
Of course, Marianne and I know nothing of 
these troubles ; we, being a model pair, sit 
among the clouds and speculate on all these 
matters as spectators merely." 

" Well, you see what your principle leads 
to, carried out," said Jennie. " If home is 
merely the place where one may feel at lib- 
erty to be tired or dull or disagreeable, with- 
out losinsf one's character, I think the women 
have far more right to avail themselves of the 
liberty than the men ; for all the lonesome, 
dull, disagreeable part of home-life comes into 
their department. It is they who must keep 
awake with the baby, if it frets ; and if they 
do not feel spirits to make an attractive toilette 
in the morning, or have not the airy, graceful 
fancies that they had when they were girls, 
it is not so very much against them. A house- 
keeper and nursery-maid cannot be expected 
to be quite as elegant in her toilette and as 
entertaining in her ways as a girl without a 



Discourtesy. 223 

care in her father's house ; but I think that 
this is no excuse for husbands neglecting the 
little civilities and attentions which they used 
to show before marri^age. They are strong and 
well and hearty ; go out into the world and 
hear and see a great deal that keeps their 
minds moving and awake ; and they ought to 
entertain their wives after marriage just as their 
wives entertained them before. That 's the 
way my husband must do, or I will never have 
one, — and it will be small loss, if I don't," said 
Miss Jennie. 

" Well," said Bob, " I must endeavor to ini- 
tiate Charley Sedley in time." 

" Charley Sedley, Bob ! " said Jennie, with 
crimson indignation. " I wonder you will al- 
ways bring up that old story, when I Ve told 
you a hundred times how disagreeable it is ! 
Charley and I are good friends, but — " 

" There, there," said Bob, " that will do ; you 
don't need to proceed further." 

" You only said that because you could n't 
answer my argument," said Jennie. 



224 Little Foxes. 

"Well, my dear/' said Bob, "you know ev- 
erything has two sides to it, and I '11 admit 
that you have brought up the opposite side to 
mine quite handsomely ; but, for all that, I am 
convinced, that, if what I said was not really 
the truth, yet the truth lies somewhere in the 
vicinity of it. As I said before, so I say again, 
true love ought to beget a freedom which shall 
do away with the necessity of ceremony, and 
much may and ought to be tolerated among 
near and dear friends that would be discour- 
teous among strangers. I am just as sure of 
this as of anything in the world." 

" And yet," said my wife, " there is certainly 
truth in the much quoted lines of Cowper, on 
Friendship, where he says, — 

" As similarity of mind, 
Or something not to be defined. 

First fixes our attention, 
So manners decent and polite, 
The same we practised at first sight, 
Will save it from declension." 

" Well, now," said Bob, " I Ve seen enough 



Discourtesy. 225 

of French politeness between married people 
When I was in Paris, I remember there was 
in our boarding-house a Madame de Villiers, 
whose husband had conferred upon her his 
name and the de belonging to it, in considera- 
tion of a snug little income which she brought 
to him by the marriage. His conduct towards 
her was a perfect model of all the graces of 
civilized life. It was true that he lived on her 
income, and spent it in promenading the Bou- 
levards, and visiting theatres and operas with 
divers fair friends of easy morals ; still all this 
was so courteously, so politely, so diplomatically 
arranged with Madame, that it was quite worth 
while to be neglected and cheated for the sake 
of having the thing done in so finished and 
elegant a manner. According to his showing. 
Monsieur had taken the neat little apartment 
for her in our pensioiiy because his circumstances 
were embarrassed, and he would be in despair 
to drag such a creature into hardships which 
he described as terrific, and which he was re- 
10* o 



226 Little Foxes, 

solved heroically to endure alone. No, while 
a sous remained to them, his adored Julie should 
have her apartment and the comforts of life 
secured to her, while the barest attic should 
suffice for him. Never did he visit her without 
kissing her hand with the homage due to a 
princess, complimenting her on her good looks, 
bringing bonbons, entertaining her with most 
ravishing small-talk of all the interesting on-dits 
in Paris ; and these visits were most particu- 
larly frequent as the time for receiving her 
quarterly instalments approached. And so Ma- 
dame adored him and could refuse him noth- 
ing, believed all his stories, and was well con- 
tent to live on a fourth of her own income for 
the sake of so engaging a husband." 

" Well," said Jennie, " I don't know to what 
purpose your anecdote is related, but to me it 
means simply this : if a rascal, without heart, 
without principle, without any good quality, can 
win and keep a woman's heart merely by being 
invariably polite and agreeable, while in her 



Discourtesy. 227 

presence, how much more might a man of 
sense and principle and real affection do by 
the same means ! I 'm sure, if a man who neg- 
lects a woman, and robs her of her money, 
nevertheless keeps her affections, merely be- 
cause whenever he sees her he is courteous 
and attentive, it certainly shows that courtesy 
stands for a great deal in the matter of love." 

" With foolish women," said Bob. 

"Yes, and with sensible ones too," said my 
wife. " Your Monsieur presents a specimen of 
the French way of doing a bad thing ; but I 
know a poor woman whose husband did the 
same thing in English fashion, without kisses 
or compliments. Instead of flattering, he swore 
at her, and took her money away without the 
ceremony of presenting bonbons ; and I assure 
you, if the thing must be done at all, I would, 
for my part, much rather have it done in the 
French than the English manner. The courtesy, 
as far as it goes, is a good, and far better than 
nothing, — though, of course, one would rather 



228 Little Foxes, 

have substantial good with it. If one must be 
robbed, one would rather have one's money 
wheedled away agreeably, with kisses and bon- 
bons, than be knocked down and trampled 
upon." 

" The mistake that is made on this subject," 
said I, "is in comparing, as people generally 
do, a polished rascal with a boorish good man ; 
but the polished rascal should be compared 
with the polished good man, and the boorish 
rascal with the boorish good man, and then we 
get the true value of the article. 

" It is true, as a general rule, that those 
races of men that are most distinguished for 
outward urbanity and courtesy are the least 
distinguished for truth and sincerity ; and hence 
the well-known alliterations, * fair and false,' 
' smooth and slippery.' The fair and false 
Greek, the polished and wily Italian, the cour- 
teous and deceitful Frenchman, are associations 
which, to the strong, downright, courageous 
Anglo-Saxon, make up-and-down rudeness and 



Discourtesy. 229 

blunt discourtesy a type of truth and hon- 
esty. 

" No one can read French literature without 
feeling how the element of courtesy pervades 
every department of life, — how carefully people 
avoid being personally disagreeable in their in- 
tercourse. A domestic quarrel, if we may trust 
French plays, is carried on with all the refine- 
ments of good breeding, and insults are given 
with elegant civihty. It seems impossible to 
translate into French the direct and downright 
brutalities which the English tongue allows. 
The whole intercourse of life is arranged on 
the understanding that all personal contacts 
shall be smooth and civil, and such as to ob- 
viate the necessity of personal jostle and jar. 

" Does a Frenchman engage a clerk or other 
employ^, and afterwards hear a report to his 
disadvantage, the last thing he would think of 
would be to tell a downright unpleasant truth 
to the man. He writes him a civil note, and 
tells him, that, in consequence of an unex- 



230 Little Foxes. 

pected change of business, he shall not need 
an assistant in that department, and much re- 
grets that this will deprive him of Monsieur's 
agreeable society, etc. 

"A more striking example cannot be found 
of this sort of intercourse than the representa- 
tion in the life of Madame George Sand of the 
proceedings between her father and his mother. 
There is all the romance of affection between 
this mother and son. He writes her the most 
devoted letters, he kisses her hand on every 
page, he is the very image of a gallant, charm- 
ing, lovable son, while at the same time he is 
secretly making arrangements for a private mar- 
riage with a woman of low rank and indiffer- 
ent reputation, — a marriage which he knows 
would be like death to his mother. He mar- 
ries, lives with his wife, has one or two chil- 
dren by her, before he will pain the heart of 
his adored mother by telling her the truth. 
The adored mother suspects her son, but no 
trace of the suspicion appears in her letters to 



Discourtesy. 231 

him. The questions which an English parent 
would level at him point-blank she is entirely 
too delicate to address to her dear Maurice ; 
but she puts them to the Prefect of Police, and 
ferrets out the marriage through legal docu- 
ments, while yet no trace of this knowledge 
dims the affectionateness of her letters, or the 
serenity of her reception of her son when he 
comes to bestow on her the time which he 
can spare from his family cares. In an Eng- 
lish or American family there would have been 
a battle royal, an open rupture ; whereas this 
courteous son and mother go on for years with 
this polite drama, she pretending to be deceived 
while she is not, and he supposing that he is 
sparing her feelings by the deception. 

" Now it is the reaction from such a style of 
life on the truthful Anglo-Saxon nature that 
leads to an undervaluing of courtesy, as if it 
were of necessity opposed to sincerity. But it 
does not follow, because all is not gold that 
glitters, that nothing that glitters is gold, and 



232 Little Foxes. 

because courtesy and delicacy of personal inter- 
course are often perverted to deceit, that they 
are not valuable allies of truth. No woman 
would prefer a slippery, plausible rascal to a 
rough, unceremonious honest man ; but of two 
men equally truthful and affectionate, every wo- 
man would prefer the courteous one." 

"Well," said Bob, "there is a loathsome, 
sickly stench of cowardice and distrust about 
all this kind of French delicacy that is enough 
to drive an honest fellow to the other extreme. 
True love ought to be a robust, hardy plant, 
that can stand a free out-door life of sun and 
wind and rain. People who are too delicate 
and courteous ever fully to speak their minds 
to each other are apt to have stagnant residu- 
ums of unpleasant feelings which breed all sorts 
of gnats and mosquitos. My rule is. Say ev- 
erything out as you go along ; have your little 
tiffs, and get over them ; jar and jolt and rub 
a little, and learn to take rubs and bear jolts. 

"If I take less thought and use less civility 



Discourtesy. 233 

of expression, in announcing to Marianne that 
her coffee is roasted too much, than I did to 
old Mrs. Pollux when I boarded with her, it's 
because I take it Marianne is somewhat more 
a part of myself than old Mrs. Pollux was,— 
that there is an intimacy and confidence be- 
tween us which will enable us to use the short- 
hand of life, — that she will not fall into a pas- 
sion or fly into hysterics, but will merely speak 
to cook in good time. If I don't thank her for 
mending my glove in just the style that I did 
when I was a lover, it is because now she does 
that sort of thing for me so often that it would 
be a downright bore to her to have me always 
on my knees about it. All that I could think 
of to say about her graceful handiness and her 
delicate needle-work has been said so often, 
and is so well understood, that it has entirely 
lost the zest of originality. Marianne and I 
have had sundry little battles, in which the 
victory came out on both sides, each of us 
thinking the better of the other for the vigor 



234 Little Foxes. 

and spirit with which we conducted matters ; 
and our habit of perfect plain-speaking and 
truth-telling to each other is better than all 
the delicacies that ever were hatched up in the 
hot-bed of French sentiment." 

" Perfectly true, perfectly right," said I. " Ev- 
ery word good as gold. Truth before all things ; 
sincerity before all things : pure, clear, diamond- 
bright sincerity is of more value than the gold 
of Ophir ; the foundation of all love must rest 
here. How those people do who live in the 
nearest and dearest intimacy with friends who 
they believe will lie to them for any purpose, 
even the most refined and delicate, is a mys- 
tery to me. If I once know that my wife or 
my friend will tell me only what they think 
will be agreeable to me, then I am at once 
lost, my way is a pathless quicksand. But all 
this being premised, I still say that we Anglo- 
Saxons might improve our domestic life, if we 
would graft upon the strong stock of its homely 
sincerity the courteous graces of the French 
character. 



Discourtesy. 235 

" If anybody wishes to know exactly what I 
mean by this, let him read the Memoir of De 
Tocqueville, whom I take to be the representa- 
tive of the French ideal man ; and certainly 
the kind of family life which his domestic let- 
ters disclose has a delicacy and a beauty which 
adorn its solid worth. 

"What I have to say on this matter is, that 
it is very dangerous for any individual man 
or any race of men continually to cry up the 
virtues to which they are constitutionally in- 
clined, and to be constantly dweUing with rep- 
robation on faults to which they have no man- 
ner of temptation. 

" I think that we of the English race may 
set it down as a general rule, that we are in 
no danger of becoming hypocrites in domestic 
life through an extra sense of politeness, and 
in some danger of becoming boors from a 
rough, uncultivated instinct of sincerity. But 
to bring the matter to a practical point, I will 
specify some particulars in which the courtesy 



236 Little Foxes. 

we show to strangers might with advantage 
be grafted into our home-life. 

"In the first place, then, let us watch our 
course when we are entertaining strangers 
whose good opinion we wish to propitiate 
We dress ourselves with care, we study what 
it will be agreeable to say, we do not sufTei 
our natural laziness to prevent our being very 
alert in paying small attentions, we start across 
the room for an easier chair, we stoop to pick 
up the fan, we search for the mislaid news- 
paper, and all this for persons in whom we have 
no particular interest beyond the passing hour ; 
while with those friends whom we love and 
respect we too often sit in our old faded habili- 
ments, and let them get their own chair, and 
look up their own newspaper, and fight their 
own way daily, without any of this preventing 
care. 

" In the matter of personal adornment, espe- 
cially, there are a great many people who are 
chargeable with the same fault that I have 



Discourtesy. 237 

already spoken of in reference to household 
arrangements. They have a splendid ward- 
robe for company, and a shabby and sordid 
one for domestic life. A woman puts all her 
income into party-dresses, and thinks anything 
will do to wear at home. All her old tumbled 
finery, her frayed, dirty silks and soiled ribbons, 
are made to do duty for her hours of inter- 
course with her dearest friends. Some seem 
to be really principled against wearing a hand- 
some dress in every-day life ; they ' cannot 
afford' to be well-dressed in private. Now 
what I should recommend would be to take 
the money necessary for one or two party- 
dresses and spend it upon an appropriate and 
tasteful home-toilette, and to make it an avowed 
object to look prettily at home. 

" We men are a sort of stupid, blind animals : 
we know when we are pleased, but we don't 
know what it is that pleases us ; we say we 
don't care anything about flowers, but if there 
is a flower-garden under our window, somehow 



238 Little Foxes. 

or other we are dimly conscious of it, and feel 
that there is something pleasant there ; and 
so when our wives and daughters are prettily 
and tastefully attired, we know it, and it glad- 
dens our life far more than we are perhaps 
aware of" 

" Well, Papa," said Jennie, " I think the men 
ought to take just as much pains to get them- 
selves up nicely after marriage as the women. 
I think there are such things as tumbled shirt- 
collars and frowzy hair and muddy shoes 
brought into the domestic sanctuary, as well 
as frayed silks and dirty ribbons." 

" Certainly," I said ; " but you know we are 
the natural Hottentot, and you are the mission- 
aries who are to keep us from degenerating ; 
we are the clumsy, old, blind Vulcan, and you 
the fair Cytherea, the bearers of the magic 
cestus, and therefore it is to you that this head 
more particularly belongs. 

" Now I maintain that in family-life there 
should be an effort not only to be neat and 



Discourtesy. 239 

decent in the arrangement of our person, but 
to be also what the French call coquette,^ ox 
to put it in plain English, there should be an 
endeavor to make ourselves look handsome in 
the eyes of our dearest friends. 

"Many worthy women, who would not for 
the world be found wanting in the matter of 
personal neatness, seem somehow to have the 
notion that any study of the arts of personal 
beauty in family-life is unmatronly ; they buy 
their clothes with simple reference to econ- 
omy, and have them made up without any 
question of becomingness ; and hence marriage 
sometimes transforms a charming, trim, tripping 
young lady into a waddling matron whose 
every-day toilette suggests only the idea of a 
feather-bed tied round with a string. For my 
part, I do not believe that the summary ban- 
ishment of the Graces from the domestic cir- 
cle as soon as the first baby makes its appear- 
ance is at all conducive to domestic affection. 
Nor do I think that there is any need of so 



240 Little Foxes. 

doing. These good housewives are in dange , 
like other saints, of falling into the error d 
neglecting the body through too much thought- 
fulness for others and too little for themselves. 
If a woman ever had any attractiveness, let 
her try and keep it, setting it down as one of 
her domestic talents. As for my erring broth- 
ers who violate the domestic sanctuary by 
tousled hair, tumbled linen, and muddy shoes, 
I deliver them over to Miss Jennie without 
benefit of clergy. 

"My second head is, that there should be 
in family-life the same delicacy *in the avoid- 
ance of disagreeable' topics that characterizes 
the intercourse of refined society among stran- 
gers. 

"I do not think that it makes family-life 
more sincere, or any more honest, to have the 
members of a domestic circle feel a freedom 
to blurt out in each other's faces, without 
thought or care, all the disagreeable things 
that may occur to them : as, for example. 



Discourtesy. 241 

* How horridly you look this morning ! What 's 
the matter with you ? ' — 'Is there a pimple 
coming on your nose ? or what is that spot ? ' 

— 'What made you buy such a dreadfully un- 
becoming dress ? It sets like a witch ! Who 
cut it ? ' — ' What makes you wear that pair of 
old shoes ? ' — ' Holloa, Bess ! is that your par- 
ty-rig ? I should think you were going out 
for a walking advertisement of a flower-store ! ' 

— Observations of this kind between husbands 
and wives, brothers and sisters, or intimate 
friends, do not indicate sincerity, but obtuse- 
ness ; and the person who remarks on the 
pimple on your nose is in m^ny cases just as 
apt to deceive you as the most accomplished 
Frenchwoman who avoids disagreeable topics 
in your presence. 

"Many families seem to think that it is a 
proof of family union and good-nature that they 
can pick each other to pieces, joke on each 
other's feelings and infirmities, and treat each 
other with a general tally-ho-ing rudeness with- 
\i p 



242 Little Foxes. 

out any offence or ill-feeling. If there is a 
limping sister, there is a never-failing supply 
of jokes on ' Dot-and-go-one ' ; and so with 
other defects and peculiarities of mind or man- 
ners. Now the perfect good-nature and mu- 
tual confidence which allow all this liberty are 
certainly admirable ; but the liberty itself is 
far from making home-life interesting or agree- 
able. 

"Jokes upon personal or mental infirmities, 
and a general habit of saying things in jest 
which would be the height of rudeness if said 
in earnest, are all habits which take from the 
delicacy of family affection. 

"In all this rough playing with edge-tools 
many are hit and hurt who are ashamed or 
afraid to complain.- And after all, what pos- 
sible good or benefit comes from it } Courage 
to say disagreeable things, when it is neces- 
sary to say them for the highest good of the 
person addressed, is a sublime quality ; but a 
cai'eless habit of saying them, in the mere 



Discourtesy. 243 

freedom of family intercourse, is certainly as 
great a spoiler of the domestic vines as any 
fox running. 

" There is one point under this head which 
I enlarge upon for the benefit of my own sex : 
I mean table-criticisms. The conduct of house- 
keeping, in the present state of domestic ser- 
vice, certainly requires great allowance ; and 
the habit of unceremonious comment on the 
cooking and appointments of the table, in 
which some husbands habitually allow them- 
selves, is the most unpardonable form of do- 
mestic rudeness. If a wife has philosophy 
enough not to mind it, so much the worse for 
her husband, as it confirms him in an unseem- 
ly habit, embarrassing to guests and a bad ex- 
ample to children. If she has no feelings that 
he is bound to respect, he should at least re- 
spect decorum and good taste, and confine the 
discussion of such matters to private inter- 
course, and not initiate every guest and child 
into the grating and greasing of the wheels 
of the domestic machinery. 



244 Little Foxes. 

"Another thing in which families might im- 
itate the politeness of strangers is a wise reti- 
cence with regard to the asking of questions 
and the offering of advice. 

"A large family includes many persons of 
different tastes, habits, modes of thinking and 
acting, and it would be wise and well to leave 
to each one that measure of freedom in these 
respects which the laws of general politeness 
require. Brothers and sisters may love each 
other very much, and yet not enough to make 
joint-stock of all their ideas, plans, wishes, 
schemes, friendships. There are in every fam- 
ily-circle individuals whom a certain sensitive- 
ness of nature inclines to quietness and re- 
serve ; and there are very well-meaning fam- 
ilies where no such quietness or reserve is pos- 
sible. Nobody can be let alone, nobody may 
have a secret, nobody can move in any direc- 
tion, without a host of inquiries and comments. 
* Who is your letter from } Let 's see.' — ' My 
letter is from So-and-So.' — '//"^ writing to you? 



Discourtesy. 245 

I did n't know that. What 's he writing about ? * 

— * Where did you go yesterday ? What did 
you buy ? What did you give for it ? What 
are you going to do with it ? ' — * Seems to me 
that 's an odd way to do. I should n't do so.* 

— * Look here, Mary ; Sarah 's going to have 
a dress of silk tissue this spring. Now I think 
they 're too dear, — don't you ? ' 

"I recollect seeing in some author a descrip- 
tion of a true gentleman, in which, among other 
traits, he was characterized as the man that 
asks the fewest questions. This trait of re- 
fined society might be adopted into home-life 
in a far greater degree than it is, and make it 
far more agreeable. 

"If there is perfect unreserve and mutual 
confidence, let it show itself in free communi- 
cations coming unsolicited. It may fairly be 
presumed, that, if there is anything our inti- 
mate friends wish us to know, they will tell us 
of it, — and that when we are on close and con- 
fidential terms with persons, and there are 



246 Little Foxes. 

topics on which they do not speak to us, it is 
because for some reason they prefer to keep 
silence concerning them ; and the delicacy that 
respects a friend's silence is one of the charms 
of life. 

"As with the asking of questions, so with 
the oftering of advice, there should be among 
friends a wise reticence. 

" Some families are always calling each other 
to account at every step of the day. 'What 
did you put on that dress for } Why did n't 
you wear that .? ' — * What did you do this for 1 
Why did n't you do that .'' ' — ' Now / should 
advise you to do thus and so.' — And these 
comments and criticisms and advices are ac- 
companied with an energy of feeling that makes 
it rather difficult to disregard them. 

" Now it is no matter how dear and how 
good our friends may be, if they abridge our 
liberty and fetter the free exercise of our life, 
it is inevitable that we shall come to enjoying 
ourselves much better where they are not than 



Discourtesy. 247 

where they are ; and one of the reasons why 
brothers and sisters or children so often diverge 
from the family-circle in the choice of confi- 
dants is, that extraneous friends are bound by 
certain laws of delicacy not to push inquiries, 
criticisms, or advice too far. 

"Parents would do well to remember in time 
when their children have grown up into inde- 
pendent human beings, and use with a wise 
moderation those advisory and admonitory pow- 
ers with which they guided their earlier days. 
Let us give everybody a right to live his own 
life, as far as possible, and avoid imposing our 
own personalities on another. 

"If I were to picture a perfect family, it 
should be a union of people of individual and 
marked character, who through love have come 
to a perfect appreciation of each other, and 
who so wisely understand themselves and one 
another that each may move freely along his 
or her own track without jar or jostle, — a 
family where affection is always sympathetic 
and receptive, but never inquisitive, — where 



248 Little Foxes. 

all personal delicacies are respected, — and 
where there is a sense of privacy and seclusion 
in following one's own course, unchallenged 
by the watchfulness of others, yet withal a 
sense of society and support in a knowledge 
of the kind dispositions and interpretations of 
all around. 

"In treating of family discourtesies, I have 
avoided speaking of those which come from 
ill-temper and brute selfishness, because these 
are sins more than mistakes. An angry per- 
son is generally impolite ; and where conten- 
tion and ill-will are, there can be no courtesy. 
What I have mentioned are rather the lackings 
of good and often admirable people, who merely 
need to consider in their family-life a little more 
of whatsoever things are lovely. With such the 
mere admission of anything to be pursued as 
a duty secures the purpose ; only in their 
somewhat earnest pursuit of the substantials 
of life they drop and pass by the little things 
that give it sweetness and perfume. To such 
a word is enough, and that word is said." 



VII. 

EXACTINGNESS. 

A T length I am arrived at my seventh fox, 
— the last of the domestic quadrupeds 
against which I have vowed a crusade, — and 
here opens the chase of him. I call him 

EXA CTINGJVESS. 
And having done this, I drop the metaphor, for 
fear of chasing it beyond the rules of graceful 
rhetoric, and shall proceed to define the trait 

All the other domestic faults of which I have 
treated have relation to the manner in which 
the ends of life are pursued ; but this one is 
an underlying, false, and diseased state of con- 
ception as to the very ends and purposes of 
life itself 

If a piano is tuned to exact concert pitch, 
the majority of voices must fall below it ; for 



250 Little Foxes. 

which reason, most people indulgently allow 
their pianos to be tuned a" little below this 
point, in accommodation to the average power 
of the human voice. Persons of only ordinary 
powers of voice would be considered absolute 
monomaniacs, who should insist on having their 
pianos tuned to accord with any abstract no- 
tion of propriety or perfection, — rendering 
themselves wretched by persistently singing all 
their pieces miserably out of tune in conse- 
quence. 

Yet there are persons who keep the require- 
ments of life strained up always at concert 
pitch, and are thus worn out and made misera- 
ble all their days by the grating of a perpetual 
discord. 

There is a faculty of the human mind to 
which phrenologists have given the name of 
Ideality, which is at the foundation of this 
exactingness. Ideality is the faculty by which 
we conceive of and long for perfection ; and at 
a glance it will be seen, that, so far from being 



Exactingness. 25 1 

dn evil ingredient of human nature, it is the 
one element of progress that distinguishes 
man's nature from that of the brute. While 
animals go on from generation to generation, 
learning nothing and forgetting nothing, prac- 
tising their small circle of the arts of life no 
better and no worse from year to year, man is 
driven by ideality to constant invention and 
alteration, whence come arts, sciences, and the 
whole progress of society. Ideality induces 
discontent with present attainments, posses- 
sions, and performances, and hence come bet- 
ter and better ones. So in morals, ideality 
constantly incites to higher and nobler modes 
of living and thinking, and is the faculty to 
which the most effective teachings of the great 
Master of Christianity are addressed. To be 
dissatisfied with present attainments, with earth- 
ly things and scenes, to aspire and press on to 
something forever fair, yet forever receding be- 
fore our steps, — this is the teaching of Chris- 
tianity, and the work of the Christian. 



252 Little Foxes. 

But every faculty has its own instinctive, wild 
growth, which, like the spontaneous produce 
of the earth, is crude and weedy. 

Revenge, says Lord Bacon, is a sort of wild 
justice, obstinacy is untutored firmness, — and 
so exactingness is untrained ideality ; and a 
vast deal of misery, social and domestic, comes, 
not of the faculty, but of its untrained exercise. 

The faculty which is ever conceiving and 
desiring something better and more perfect 
must be modified in its action by good sense, 
patience, and conscience, or it induces a mor- 
bid, discontented spirit, which courses through 
the veins of individual and family life like a 
subtle poison. 

In a certain neighborhood are two families 
whose social and domestic aniinus illustrates 
the difference between ideality and the want 
of it. 

The Day tons are a large, easy-natured, joy- 
ous race, hospitable, kindly, and friendly. 

Nothing about their establishment is much 



Exactingness. 253 

above mediocrity. The grounds are tolerably 
kept, the table is tolerably fair, the servants 
moderately good, and the family character and 
attainments of the same average level. 

Mrs. Dayton is a decent housekeeper, and 
so her bread be not sour, her butter not frowy, 
the food abundant, and the table-cloth and 
dishes clean, she troubles her head little with 
the niceties and refinements of the menage. 

She accepts her children as they come from 
the hand of Nature, simply opening her eyes 
to discern what they are, never raising the 
query what she would have had them, — form- 
ing no very high expectations concerning them, 
and well content with whatever develops. 

A visitor in the family can easily see a thou- 
sand defects in the conduct of affairs, in the 
management of the children, and in this, that, 
and the other portion of the household ar- 
rangements ; but he can see and feel, also, a 
perfect comfortableness in the domestic atmos- 
phere that almost atones for any defects. He 



254 Little Foxes. 

can see that in a thousand respects things 
might be better done, if the family were not 
perfectly content to have them as they are, 
and that each individual member might make 
higher attainments in various directions, were 
there not such entire satisfaction with what 
is already attained. 

Trying each other by very moderate stand- 
ards and measurements, there is great mutual 
complacency. The oldest boy does not get an 
appointment in college, — they never expected 
he would ; but he was a respectable scholar, 
and they receive him with acclamations such 
as another family would bestow on a valedic- 
torian. The daughters do not profess, as we 
are told, to draw like artists, but some very 
moderate performances in the line of the fine 
arts are dwelt on with much innocent pleasure. 
They thrum a few tunes on the piano, and the 
whole family listen and approve. All unite in 
singing in a somewhat uncultured manner a 
few psalm-tunes or songs, and take more com- 



Exactingness. 255 

fort in them than many amateurs do in their 
well-drilled performances. 

So goes the world with the Daytons ; and 
when you visit them, if you often feel that you 
could ask more and suggest much improvement, 
yet you cannot help enjoying the quiet satisfac- 
tion which breathes around you. 

Now right across the way from the Daytons 
live the Mores ; and the Mores are the very 
opposites of the Daytons. 

Everything about their establishment is 
brought to the highest point of culture. The 
carriage-drive never shows a weed, the lawn is 
velvet, the flower-beds ever-blooming, the fruit- 
trees and vines grow exactly like the patterns 
in the best pomological treatises Within doors 
the housekeeping is faultless, — all seems to be 
moving in time and tune, — the table is more 
than good, it is superlative, — every article is 
in its way a model, — the children appear to 
you to be growing up after the most patent- 
right method, duly trained, snipped, and cul- 



256 Little Foxes, 

tured, like the pear-trees and grape-vines 
Nothing is left to accident, or done without 
much laborious consideration of the best man- 
ner of doing it ; and the consequences, in the 
eyes of their simple, unsophisticated neighbors, 
are very wonderful. 

Nevertheless this is not a happy family. All 
their perfections do not begin to afford them 
one tithe of the satisfaction that the Daytons 
derive from their ragged and scrambling per- 
formances. 

The two daughters, Jane and Maria, had nat- 
urally very sweet voices, and when they were 
little, trilled tunes in a very pleasant and bird- 
like manner. But now, having been instructed 
by the best masters, and heard the very first 
artists, they never sing or play ; the piano is 
shut, and their voices are dumb. If you re- 
quest a song, they tell you that they never sing 
now ; papa has such an exquisite taste, he takes 
no interest in any common music ; in short, 
having heard Jenny Lind, Grisi, Alboni, Mario, 



Exactingness. 257 

and others of the tuneful shell, this family have 
concluded to abide in silence. As to any mu- 
sic that they could make, it is n't to be thought 
of. 

For the same reason, the daughters, after 
attending a quarter or two on the drawing-ex- 
ercises of a celebrated teacher, threw up their 
pencils in disgust, and tore up very prett}? 
and agreeable sketches which were the mar- 
vel of their good-natured admiring neighbors. 
If they could draw like Signor Scratchalini, 
if they coulcl hope to become perfect artists, 
they tell you, they would have persevered ; but 
they have taken lessons enough to learn that 
drawing is the labor of a lifetime, and, not 
having a lifetime to give to it, they resolve to 
do nothing at all. 

They have also, for a similar reason, given 
up letter-writing. If their chirography were 
as elegant as Charlotte Cushman's, — if they 
were perfect mistresses of polite English, — if 
they were gifted with wit, humor, and fancy, 

Q 



258 Little Foxes. 

like the first masters of style, — they would 
take pleasure in epistolary composition, and be 
good correspondents ; but anything short of 
that is so intolerable, that, except in cases of 
life and death or urgent business, you cannot 
get a line out of them. Yet they write very 
fair, agreeable, womanly letters, and would 
write much better ones, if they allowed them- 
selves a little more practice. 

Mrs. More is devoured by care. She sits 
with a clouded brow in her elegant, well-regu- 
lated house ; and when you talk with her, you 
are surprised to learn that everything in it is 
in the most dreadful disorder from one end to 
the other. You ask for particulars, and find 
that the disorder has relation to exquisite stand- 
ards of the ways of doing things, derived from 
observation of life in the most subdivided state 
of European service, — to all of which she has 
not as yet been able to raise her domestics. 
You compliment her on her cook, and she re- 
sponds, in plaintive accents, "She can do a 



Exactingitess. 259 

tew things decently, but she is nothing of a 
cook." You refer with enthusiasm to her bread, 
her coffee, her muffins and hot rolls, and she 
listens and sighs. "Yes," she admits, "these 
are eatable, — not bad ; but you should have 
seen the rolls at a certain caf(^ in Paris, and 
the bread at a certain nobleman's in England, 
where they had a bakery in the castle, and a 
French baker, who did nothing all the while 
but to refine and perfect the idea of bread. 
When she thinks of these things, everything 
in comparison is so coarse and rough ! — but 
then she has learned to be comfortable." Thus, 
in every department of housekeeping, to this 
too well-instructed person, 

" Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise." 

Not a thing in her wide and apparently beau- 
tifully kept establishment is ever done well 
enough to elicit from her more than a sigh of 
toleration. "I suppose it must do,** she faintly 
breathes, when poor human nature, having tried 
and tried again, evidently has got to the boun- 



26o Little Foxes. 

daries of its capabilities; "you may let it go, 
Jane ; I never expect to be suited." 

The poor woman, in the midst of posses- 
sions and attainments which excite the envy of 
her neighbors, is utterly restless and wretched, 
and feels herself always baffled and unsuccess- 
ful. Her exacting nature makes her dissatis- 
fied with herself in everything that she under- 
takes, and equally dissatisfied with others. In 
the whole family there is little of that pleasure 
which comes from the consciousness of mutual 
admiration and esteem, because each one is 
pitched to so exquisite a tone that each is 
afraid to touch another for fear of making 
discord. They are afraid of each other every- 
where. They cannot sing to each other, play 
to each other, write to each other; they can- 
not even converse together with any freedom, 
because each knows that the others are so dis- 
mally well informed and critically instructed. 

Though all agree in a secret contempt for 
their neighbors over the way, as living in a 



Exactingness. 26 1 

most heathenish state of ignorant contentment, 
yet it is a fact that the elegant brother John 
will often, on the sly, slip into the Daytons' 
to spend an evening, and join them in singing 
glees and catches to their old rattling piano, 
and have a jolly time of it, which he remem- 
bers in contrast with the dull, silent hours at 
home. Kate Dayton has an uncultivated voice, 
which often falls from pitch ; but she has a 
perfectly infectious gayety of good-nature, and 
when she is once at the piano, and all join in 
some merry troll, he begins to think that there 
may be something better even than good sing- 
ing ; and then they have dances and charades 
and games, all in such contented, jolly, im- 
promptu ignorance of the unities of time, place, 
and circumstance, that he sometimes doubts, 
where ignorance is such bliss, whether it is n't 
in truth folly to be wise. 

Jane and Maria laugh at John for his par- 
tiality to the Daytons, and yet they themselves 
feel the same attraction. At the Daytons* 



262 Little Foxes. 

they somehow find themselves heroines ; their 
drawings are so admired, their singing is so 
charming to these simple ears, that they are 
often beguiled into giving pleasure with their 
own despised acquirements ; and Jane, some- 
how, is very tolerant of the devoted attention 
of Will Dayton, a joyous, honest-hearted fellow, 
whom, in her heart of hearts, she likes none the 
worse for being unexacting and simple enough 
to think her a wonder of taste and accomplish- 
ments. Will, of course, is the farthest possible 
from the Admirable Crichtons and exquisite 
Sir Philip Sidneys whom Mrs. More and the 
young ladies talk up at their leisure, and adorn 
with feathers from every royal and celestial 
bird, when they are discussing theoretic possi- 
ble husbands. He is not in any way distin- 
guished, except for a kind heart, strong native 
good sense, and a manly energy that has car- 
ried him straight into the very heart of many 
a citadel of life, before which the superior and 
more refined Mr. John had set himself down 



Exactingness. * 263 

to deliberate upon . the best and most elegant 
way of taking it. Will's plain, homely intelli- 
gence has often in five minutes disentangled 
some ethereal snarl in which these exquisite 
Mores had spun themselves up, and brought 
them to his own way of thinking by that sort 
of disenchanting process which honest, practi- 
cal sense sometimes exerts over ideality. 

The fact is, however, that in each of these 
families there is a natural defect which re- 
quires something from the other for complete- 
ness. Taking happiness as the standard, the 
Daytons have it as against the Mores. Tak- 
ing attainment as the standard, the Mores have 
it as against the Daytons. A portion of the 
discontented ideality of the Mores would stim- 
ulate the Daytons to refine and perfect many 
things which might easily be made better, did 
they care enough to have them so ; and a 
portion of the Daytons' self-satisfied content- 
ment would make the attainments and refine- 
ments of the Mores of some practical use in 
advancing their own happiness. 



264 Little Foxes, 

But between these two classes of natures lies 
another, to which has been given an equal 
share of ideality, — in which the conception 
and'the desire of excellence are equally strong, 
but in which a discriminating common-sense 
acts like a balance-wheel in machinery. What 
is the reason that the most exacting idealists 
never make themselves unhappy about not be- 
ing able to fly like a bird or swim like a fish ? 
Because common-sense teaches them that these 
accomplishments are so utterly out of the ques- 
tion that they never arise to the mind as ob 
jects of desire. In these well-balanced minds 
we speak of, common-sense runs an instinctive 
line all through life between the attainable 
and the unattainable, and sets the key of de- 
sire accordingly. 

Common-sense teaches that there is no one 
branch of human art or science in which per- 
fection is not a point forever receding. A bot- 
anist gravely assures us, that to become per- 
fect in the knowledge of one branch of sea- 



Exactingness. 265 

weeds would take all the time and strength of 
a man for a lifetime. There is no limit to 
music, to the fine arts. There is never a time 
when the gardener can rest, saying that his 
garden is perfect. Housekeeping, cooking, sew- 
ing, knitting, may all, for aught we know, be 
pushed on forever, without exhausting the capa- 
bilities for better doing. 

But while attainment in everything is end- 
less, circumstances forbid the greater part of 
human beings from attaining in any direction 
the half of what they see would be desirable ; 
and the difference between the miserable ideal- 
ist and the contented realist often is, not that 
both do not see what needs to be done for 
perfection, but that, seeing it, one is satisfied 
with the attainable, and the other forever frets 
and wears himself out on the unattainable. 

The principal of a large and complicated 
public institution was complimented on main- 
taining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid 
such a diversity of cares. " I 've made up my 



266 Little Foxes. 

mind to be satisfied, when things are done 
half as well as I would have them," was his 
answer ; and the same philosophy would apply 
with cheering results to the domestic sphere. 

There is a saying which one often hears 
among common people, that such and such a 
one are persons who never could be happy, 
unless everything went ^^just sol' — that is, in 
accordance with their highest conceptions. 

When these persons are women, and under- 
take the sway of a home empire, they are 
sure to be miserable, and to make others so ; 
for home is a place where by no kind of magic 
possible to woman can everything be always 
made to go "just so." 

We may read treatises on education, — and 
very excellent ones there are. We may read 
very nice stories illustrating home manage- 
ment, in which book-children and book-ser- 
vants all work into the author's plan with 
obliging unanimity ; but every real child and 
r^ servant is an uncompromising fact, whose 



Exactmgness. 267 

working into our ideal of life cannot be pre- 
dicted with any degree of certainty. A hus- 
band is another absolute fact, of whose con- 
formity to any ideal conceptions no positive 
account can be given. So, when a person has 
the most charming theories of education, the 
most complete ideals of life, it is often his lot 
to sit bound hand and foot and see them all 
trampled under the heel of opposing circum- 
stances. 

Nothing is easier than to make an ideal gar- 
den. We lay out our grounds, dig, plant, trans- 
plant, manure. We read catalogues of roses 
till we are bewildered with their lustrous glo- 
ries. We set out plum, pear, and peach, we 
luxuriate in advance on bushels of choicest 
grapes, and our theoretic garden is Paradise 
Regained. But in the actual garden there are 
cut-worms for every cabbage, squash-bugs for 
all the melons, slugs and rose-bugs for the 
roses, curculios for the plums, fire-blight for 
pears, yellows for peaches, mildew for grapes, 



268 ^ Little Foxes. 

and late and early frosts, droughts, winds, and 
hail-storms here and there for all. 

The garden and the family are fair pictures 
of each other. Both are capable of the most' 
ravishing representations on paper ; and the 
rules and directions for creating beauty and 
perfection in both can be made so apparently 
plain that he who runneth may read, and it 
would seem that a fool need not err therein; 
and yet the actual results are always halting 
miles away behind expectation and desire. 

It would be an incalculable gain to domes- 
tic happiness, if people would begin the con- 
cert of life with their instruments tuned to a 
very low pitch : they who receive the most 
happiness are generally they who demand and 
expect the least. 

Ideality often becomes an insidious mental 
and moral disease, acting all the more subtly 
from its alliances with what is highest and 
noblest within us. Shall we not aspire to be 
perfect } Shall we be content with low meas- 



Exactingness. 269 

ures and low standards in anything ? To these 
inquiries there seems of course to be but one 
answer; yet the individual driven forward in 
bhnd, unreasoning aspiration becomes wea- 
ried, bewildered, discontented, restless, fretful, 
and miserable. 

An unhappy person can never make others 
happy. The creators and governors of a home, 
who are themselves restless and inharmonious, 
cannot make harmony and peace. This is the 
secret reason why many a pure, good, consci- 
entious person is only a source of uneasiness 
in family life. They are exacting, discontented, 
unhappy ; and spread the discontent and un- 
happiness about them. They are, to begin 
with, on poor terms with themselves ; they do 
not like themselves ; they do not like their 
own appearance, manners, education, accom- 
plishments ; on all these points they try them- 
selves by ideal standards, and find themselves 
wanting. In morals, in religion, too, the same 
introverted scrutiny detects only errors and 



270 Little Foxes. 

evils, till all life seems to them a miserable, 
hopeless failure, and they wish they had never 
been born. They are angry and disgusted with 
themselves ; there is no self-toleration or self- 
endurance. And persons in a chronic quarrel 
with themselves are very apt to quarrel with 
others. That exacting nature which has no 
patience with one's own inevitable frailties and 
errors has none for those of others ; and thus 
the great motive by which Christianity enforces 
tolerance of the faults of others loses its hold. 
There are people who make no allowances 
either for themselves or anybody else, but are 
equally angry and disgusted with both. 

Now it is important that those finely strung 
natures in which ideality largely predominates 
should begin life by a religious care and re- 
straint of this faculty. As the case often 
stands, however, religion only intensifies the 
difficulty, by adding stringency to exaction and 
censoriousness, driving the subject up with an 
unremitting strain till the very cords of rea- 



Exactingness. 271 

son sometimes snap. Yet, properly understood 
and used, religion is the only cure for the evil 
of diseased ideality. The Christian religion is 
the only one that ever proposed to give to 
all human beings, however various the range 
of their nature and desires, the great underly- 
ing gift of rest. Its Author, with a strength 
of assurance which only supreme Divinity can 
justify, promises rest to all persons, under all 
circumstances, with all sorts of natures, all 
sorts of wants, and all sorts of defects. The 
invitation is as wide as the human race : " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, 
and I will give you rest." 

Now this is the more remarkable, as this 
gracious promise is accompanied by the pre- 
sentation of a standard of perfection which is 
more ideal and exacting than any other that 
has ever been placed before mankind, — which, 
in so many words, sets up absolute perfection 
as the only true goal of aspiration. 

The problem which Jesus proposes to human 



2/2 Little Foxes. 

nature is endless aspiration steadied by end- 
less peace, — a perfectly restful, yet unceasing 
effort after a good which is never to be at- 
tained till we attain a higher and more per- 
fect form of existence. It is because this prob- 
lem is insolvable by any human wisdom, that 
He says that they who take His yoke upon 
them must learn of Him, for He alone can 
make the perfect yoke easy and its burden 
light 

The first lesson in this benignant school must 
lie like a strong, broad foundation under every 
structure on which we wish to rear a happy life, 
— and that is, that the full gratification of the 
faculty of ideality is never to be expected in this 
present stage of existence, but is to be trans- 
ferred to a future life. Ideality, with its inces- 
sant, restless longings and yearnings, is snubbed 
and turned out of doors by human philosophy, 
when philosophy becomes middle-aged and sul- 
ky with repeated disappointments, — it is be- 
rated as a cheat and a liar, — told to hold its 



Exactingness. 273 

tongue and take itself elsewhere ; but Chris- 
tianity bids it be of good cheer, still to aspire 
and hope and prophesy, and points to a future 
where all its dreams shall be outdone by reality. 

A full faith in such a perfect future — a per- 
fect faith that God has planted in man no desire 
which he cannot train to complete enjoyment in 
that future — gives the mind rest and content- 
ment to postpone for a while gratifications that 
will certainly come at last. 

Such a faith is better even than that native 
philosophical good sense which restrains the 
ideal calculations and hopes of some ; for it has 
a wider scope and a deeper power. 

We have seen in our time a woman gifted 
with all those faculties which rejoice in the re- 
finements of society, dispensing the elegant hos- 
pitalities of a bountiful home, joyful and giving 
joy. A sudden reverse has swept all this away, 
the wealth on which it was based has melted like 
a fog-bank in a warm morning, and we have seen 
her with her little family beginning life again in 
12* R 



274 Little Foxes. 

the log-cabin of a Western settlement. We have 
seen her sitting in the door of the one room that 
took the place of parlor, bed-room, nursery, and 
cheerfully making her children's morning toilette 
by the help of the one tin wash-bowl that takes 
the place of her well-arranged bathing- and 
dressing-rooms ; and yet, as she twined their 
curls over her fingers, she had a laugh and a 
jest and cheerful word for all. The few morn-, 
ing-glories that she was training over her rude 
porch seemed as much a source of delight to 
her as her former greenhouse and garden ; and 
the adjustment of the one or two shelves where- 
on were the half-dozen books left of the library, 
her husband's private papers, and her own and 
her children's wardrobe, was entered into daily 
with a zealous interest as if she had never known 
a wider sphere. 

Such facility of accommodation to life's re- 
verses is sometimes supposed to be merely the 
result of a hopeful and cheerful temperament ; 
in this case it was purely the work of religion 



Exactingness. 275 

In early life, this same woman had been the 
discontented slave of ideality, had sighed with 
vain longings in the midst of real and sub- 
stantial comfort, had felt even the creasing of 
the rose-leaves of her pillow an intolerable an- 
noyance. Now she has resigned herself to the 
work and toil of life as the soldier does to the 
duties of the camp, satisfied to do and to bear, 
enjoying with a free heart the small daily 
pleasures which spring up like wild-flowers 
amid daily toils and annoyances, and looking 
to the end of the campaign for rest and con- 
genial scenes. 

This woman has within her the powers and 
gifts of an artist ; but her pencils and her col- 
ors are resolutely laid away, and she sits hour 
after hour darning her children's stockings and 
turning and arranging a scanty wardrobe which 
no ingenuity can make more than decent. She 
was a beautiful musician ; but a musical in- 
strument is now a thing of the past ; she only 
lulls her baby to sleep with snatches of the 



2/6 Little Foxes. 

songs which used to form the attraction of 
brilliant salons. She feels that a world of 
tastes and talents are lying dormant in her 
while she is doing the daily work of a nurse, 
cook, and seamstress ; but she remembers Who 
took upon Him the form of a servant before 
her, and she has full faith that her beautiful 
gifts, like bulbs sleeping under ground, shall 
come up and blossom again in that fair future 
which He has promised. Therefore it is that 
she has no sighs for the present or the past, — 
no quarrel with her life, or her lot in it ; she is 
in harmony with herself and with all around 
her ; her husband looks upon her as a fair 
daily miracle, and her children rise up and call 
her blessed. 

But, having laid the broad foundation of faith 
in a better life, as the basis on which to ground 
our present happiness, we who are of the ideal 
nature must proceed to build thereon wisely. 

In the first place, we must cultivate the 
duty of self-patience and self-toleration. Of all 



Exactingness. 277 

the religionists and moralists who ever taught, 
Fenelon is the only one who has distinctly for- 
mulated the duty which a self-educator owes 
to himself Have patience with yourself 
is a direction often occurring in his writings, 
and a most important one it is, — because pa- 
tience with ourselves is essential, if we would 
have patience with others. Let us look through 
the world. Who are the people easiest to be 
pleased, most sunny, most urbane, most toler- 
ant } Are they not persons from constitution 
and temperament on good terms with them- 
selves, — people who do not ask much of them- 
selves or try themselves severely, and who 
therefore are in a good humor for looking 
upon others ? But how is a person who is con- 
scious of a hundred daily faults and errors to 
have patience with himself } The question may 
be answered by asking, What would you say 
to a child who fretted, scolded, dashed down 
his slate, and threw his book on the floor, be- 
cause he made mistakes in his arithmetic ? 



278 Little Foxes. 

You would say, of course, "You are but a 
learner; it is not to be expected that you will 
not make mistakes ; all children do. Have pa- 
tience." Just as you would talk to that child, 
talk to yourself. Be reconciled to a lot of in- 
evitable imperfection ; be content to try con- 
tinually, and often to fail. It is the inevitable 
condition of human existence, and is to be 
accepted as such. A patient acceptance of 
mortifications and of defeats of our life's labor 
is often more efficacious for our moral advance- 
ment than even our victories. 

In the next place, we must school ourselves 
not to look with restless desire to degrees of ex- 
cellence in any department of life which circum- 
stances evidently forbid our attaining. For a 
woman with plenty of money and plenty of 
well-trained servants to be content to have fly- 
specked windows, or littered rooms, or a sloven- 
ly-ordered table, is a sin. But in a woman in 
feeble health, incumbered with a flock of restless 
little ones, and whose circumstances allow her to 



Exactingness. 279 

keep but one servant, it may be a piece of moral 
heroism to shut her eyes on many such things, 
while securing mere essentials to life and health. 
It may be a virtue in her not to push neatness 
to • such lengths as to wear herself out, or to 
break down her only servant, and to be resigned 
to have her tastes and preferences for order, 
cleanliness, and beauty crossed, as she would 
resign herself to any other affliction. No pur- 
'gatory can be more severe to people of a thor- 
ough and exact nature than to be so situated 
that they can only half do everything they un- 
dertake ; yet such is the fiery trial to which many 
a one is subjected. Life seems to drive them 
along without giving them time for anything ; 
everything is ragged, hasty performance, of 
which the mind most keenly sees and feels the 
raggedness and hastiness. Even one thing done 
as it really ought to be done would be a rest and 
refreshment to the soul ; but nowhere, in any 
department of its undertakings, is there any 
such thing to be perceived. 



28o Little Foxes. 

But there are cases where a great deal of 
wear and tear can be saved to the nerves by a 
considerate making up of one's mind as to how 
much in certain circumstances had better be 
undertaken at all Let the circumstances of 
life be surveyed, the objects we are pursuing 
arranged and counted, and see if there are not 
things here and there that may be thrown out 
of our plans entirely, that others may be better 
done. 

What if the whole care of expensive table 
luxuries, like cake and preserves, be thrown 
out of a housekeeper's budget, in order that 
the essential articles of cookery may be better 
prepared ? What if ruffling, embroidery, and 
the entire department of kindred fine arts, be 
thrown out of her calculations, in providing 
for the clothing of a family ? Many a feeble 
woman has died of too much ruffling, as she 
patiently sat up night after night sewing the 
thread of a precious, invaluable life into elab- 
orate articles which her children were none 
the healthier or more virtuous for wearing. 



Exactingness. 281 

Ideality is constantly ramifying and extend- 
ing the department of the toilette and the 
needle into a world of work and worry, where- 
in distracted women wander up and down, 
seeing no end anywhere. The sewing-ma- 
chine was announced as a relief to these toils ; 
but has it proved so ? We trow not. It 
only amounts to this, — that now there can 
be seventy-two tucks on each little petticoat, 
instead of fifteen, as before, and that twice as 
many garments are made up and held to be 
necessary as formerly. The women still sew 
to the limit of human endurance ; and still 
the old proverb holds good, that woman's 
work is never done. 

In the matter of dress, much wear and tear 
of spirit and nerves may be saved by not be- 
ginning to go in certain directions, well know- 
ing that they will take us beyoud our resources 
of time, strength, and money. 

There is one word of fear in the vocabulary 
of women of our time which must be pondered 



282 Little Foxes. 

advisedly, — trimming. In old times a good 
garment was enough ; now-a-days a garment 
is nothing without trimming. Everything, 
from the first article that the baby wears up 
to the elaborate dress of the bride, must be 
trimmed at a rate that makes the trimming 
more than the original article. A dress can 
be made in a day, but it cannot be trimmed 
under two or three days. Let a faithful, con- 
scientious woman make up her mind -how much 
of all this burden of life she will assume, re- 
membering wisely that there is no end to 
ideality in anything, and that the only way to 
deal with many perplexing parts of life is to 
leave them out altogether. 

Mrs. Kirkland, in her very amusing account 
of her log-cabin experiences, tells us of the 
great disquiet and inconvenience she had in 
attempting to arrange in her lowly abode a 
most convenient clothes-press, which was man- 
ifestly too large for the establishment. Having 
labored with the cumbersome convenience for 



Exactingness. 283 

a great length of time, and with much discom- 
fort, she at last resigned the ordering of it to 
a brawny-armed damsel of the forest, who be- 
gan by pitching it out of doors, with the com- 
prehensive remark, that, " where there was n't 
room for a thing, there was n't." 

The wisdom which inspired the remark of 
this rustic maiden might have saved the lives 
of many matrons who have worn themselves 
out in vain attempts to make comforts and 
conveniences out of things which they had 
better have thrown out of doors altogether. 

True, it requires some judgment to know 
what, among objects commonly pursued in any 
department, we really ought to reject ; and it 
requires independence and steadiness to say, 
" I will not begin to try to do certain things 
that others are doing, and that, perhaps, they 
expect of me " ; but there comes great leisure 
and quietness of spirit from the gaps thus made. 
When the unwieldy clothes-press was once cast 
out, everything in the log-cabin could have 
room. 



284 Little Foxes. 

A mother, who is anxiously trying to recon- 
cile the watchful care and training of her little 
ones with the maintenance of fashionable calls 
and parties, may lose her life in the effort to 
do both, and do both in so imperfect a man- 
ner as never to give her a moment's peace. 
But on the morrow after she comes to the se- 
rious and Christian resolve, " The training of 
my children is all that I can do well, and 
henceforth it shall be my sole object," there 
falls into her tumultuous life a Sabbath pause 
of peace and leisure. It is true that she is 
still doing a work in which absolute perfection 
ever recedes ; but she can make relative attain- 
ments far nearer the standard than before. 

Lastly, under the head of ideality let us re- 
solve to be satisfied with our own past doittgs, 
zvhen at the time of doing we nsed all the light 
God gave us, and did all in our po-djer. 

The backward action of ideality is often full 
as tormenting as its forward and prospective 
movements. The moment a thing is done and 



Exactingness. 285 

over, one would think that good sense would 
lead us to drop it like a stone in the ocean ; 
but the morbid idealist cannot cut loose from 
the past. 

"Was that, after all, the best thing? Would 
it not have been better so or so ? " And the 
self-tormented individual lies wakeful, during 
weary night-hours, revolving a thousand possi- 
bilities, and conjuring up a thousand vague 
perhapses. " If I had only done so now, per- 
haps this result would have followed, or that 
would not " ; and as there is never any saying 
but that so it might have turned out, the laby- 
rinth and the discontent are alike endless. 

Now there is grand good sense in the Apos- 
tle's direction, "Forgetting the things that are 
behind, press forward." The idealist should 
charge himself, . as with an oath of God, to let 
the past alone as an accomplished fact, solely 
concerning himself with the inquiry, " Did I 
not do the best I then knew how } " 

The maxim of the Quietists is, that, when 



286 Little Foxes. 

we have acted according to the best light we 
have, we have expressed the will of God un- 
der those circumstances, — since, had it been 
otherwise, more and different light would have 
been given us ; and with the will of God done 
by ourselves as by Himself, it is our duty to 
be content. 

Having written thus far in my article, and 
finding nothing more at hand to add to it, I 
went into the parlor to read it to Jenny and 
Mrs. Crowfield. I found the former engaged 
in the task of binding sixty yards of quilling, 
(so I think she called it,) which were absolutely 
necessary for perfecting a dress ; and the latter 
was braiding one of seven httle petticoatS; 
stamped with elaborate patterns, which she 
had taken from Marianne, because that virtu- 
ous matron was ruining her eyes and health 
in a blind push to get them done before Oc- 
tober. 

Both approved and admired my piece, and 



Exactiiigitess. 287 

I thought of Saint Anthony's preaching to 
the fishes : — 

The sermon now ended. 

Each turned and descended ; 

The pikes went on stealing, 

The eels went on eeling. 

Much delighted were they, 
But preferred the old way. 



THE END 



Cambridge : Stereotyped and Prmted by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 









•S^Xi 



Jp'^^ 



:^ 










.1^' 



# ^ 




^ 















%" 




^ ^ s ^ . 0" 






^ 

















z 



?p^^ 




'°"\4 



xO'^'ft 



"' ^ .<r .-'11: o^ > . ^0^ .-\:i:^^ ^ 










xV ^^. 






W^^ r\ 




















*"#'% 



/A 



